Conspiracy of Terror: Music, Sound Design, and the Female Scream in Horror Trailers

This article first examines the varieties of sound-music integration practices in the horror trailer, as the work of sound design and music placement. It initially analyzes how the sonic balance functions in examples of the integration of music and sound (Dr. Sleep, 2019), the approach of music score followed by sound design (You’re Next, 2013), and the soundtrack consisting exclusively or predominantly of electronically manipulated sound (Antlers, 2019). I then explore the (gendered) implications of the female scream in horror trailers, as a nonlexical vocalization falling between the audio elements of dialogue, music, and sound effect, a type of sonic “black hole” (Chion, 1999, 76). The discussion draws upon Kristeva’s notion of the abject (Kristeva, 1982) to investigate how sound design and music make the scream particularly potent in abjectifying the female subject. As examples of this practice, I consider trailers to Hostel and The Pact, and—in particular depth through comparative spectrograms—sequences from the two trailers to Insidious: The Last Key.