A Rhetorical Analysis of Sound Design in Horror Cinema

What sounds scare you? Maybe a it’s knock at the door when you’re miles from the nearest person, a whispering voice when you’re home alone, or the desolation of absolute silence. The introduction of sound in film, particularly in horror cinema, added an extra dimension to the visual wonders and terrors produced by filmmakers of the early 1900s. The advent of the “sound film” in the 1930s not only changed the entire landscape of cinema, but marked the rebirth of the horror genre. “The dreamlike imagery of the 1920s, the films peopled by ghostly wraiths floating silently through the terror of mortals, their grotesque death masks a visual representation of ‘horror’, were replaced by monsters that grunted and groaned and howled” (Wilson). Film sound (scores, dialogues, ambient noise, and sound effects) can be seen as just one of several rhetorical devices used in the conversation between the filmmaker and the audience. By examining popular horror movies like Psycho, Jaws, The Children of the Corn, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Hostel, we will focus a rhetorical lens on the use of sound in horror cinema, specifically the application of instrumental scores, dialogue, ambience and sound effects.

The Biology of Sound and Terror

For almost a century, horror cinema has been using sound to induce a fear response within their audiences by preying on our innate animalistic reactions to intimidating stimuli—namely our desire for self preservation. In order to understand sound within a fear context, we must first understand the biological factors that produce this fear response. Biologically, “[f]ear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals” that produce a series of physiological reactions commonly referred to as the flight-or-fight response (Layton 1). This response is inherent in all animals and necessary for species perpetuation. “[T]he purpose of fear is to promote survival,” so when we experience things that are perceived as threatening, we have a natural physiological response (i.e. tense muscles, elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, etc.) that prepares us should we need to flee or protect ourselves (Layton 4). One such physiological response used abundantly among animals to express fear induced anxiety is the formation of nonlinear sounds. Low growls, high-pitched whimpers, and ear piercing cries are just a few examples of the nonlinear sounds used by animals in distress. “A variety of animals, including humans, produce what in the bioacoustic literature are referred to as vocalizations with nonlinear attributes. … Nonlinearities are commonly produced when animals are under duress, such as the fear screams produced when animals are attacked by predators” (Blumstein, Davitian, and Kaye 751).

Sounds are classified as nonlinear when “they become too loud for the normal musical range of an instrument or an animal’s vocal cords” (Connor). And, as it turns out, horror filmmakers have been incorporating these nonlinear sounds into their musical scores, dialogues, and sound effects for decades. “Scientists have found that many of the emotionally-provocative moments in some of the most popular films are enhanced with a sound score that exploits the human brain’s natural aversion to the ‘non-linear’ sounds widely used in the animal kingdom to express fear and distress” (Connor). Daniel Blumstein, a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, asserts that “film-makers manipulate sounds to create nonlinear analogues in order to manipulate our emotional responses” because these sounds are “designed to capture the attention of the perceivers” (751). Nonlinear analogues can be characterized as extreme frequency jumps, nonstandard harmonies, immediate attacks, extended acousmatic attacks, discordant sounds, and human and animal vocalizations pushed beyond their normal range (Why Do Things Sound Scary; Garner). An examination of musical score, tone of dialogue, environmental ambience and sound effects will demonstrate how these nonlinear analogues function to create a fear ecology between characters, the horror movie reality in which they exist, and the audiences observing the characters’ fear responses. 

Genres of Sound in Horror Cinema

Musical Score

Several iconic film scores come to mind when addressing the use of nonlinear analogues in a musical context within horror movies. Jaws, Halloween, Children of the Corn, Suspiria, Psycho, and The Exorcist all take advantage of nonlinear analogues to stimulate the fear response in audiences. “Composers have a lot of musical instruments at their disposal to imitate nonlinear vocals … Besides the strained strings, there are also overblown brass or wind instruments and inharmonic, noisy sounds created by percussion such as gongs and cymbals” (Hsu). In the famous shower scene from the film Psycho, Bemard Hermrmann’s classic cinematic score “The Murder” uses “high-pitched string instrument notes with very fast attack” to mimic Marion Crane’s fear and to unsettle the audience (see fig. 2). “The length of a sound from its beginning to its peak is called attack, which may be fast (like slamming a door) or slow (like a dog growling).” In general, fast attacks are frightening because they are acoustically more sudden and louder. Additionally, the synchronization between the percussive sound of the violins and the stabbing knife makes the entire scene more palpable, you can literally feel the sound “penetrating your body if the volume is strong enough” (Kelleghan).

In the film Jaws, the “Main Title and First Victim” score uses the same type of irregular minor chords that trigger fear responses in mother animals when they feel their offspring are being threatened. “The Jaws theme creates a sinister feeling of suspense with its chilling, crescendoing minor chords. In [the] original trailer for the film, the minor chords start slicing in at 0:33, then are followed by the big bad chord you hear as the innocent swimmer gets yanked under at 0:35, and the high-pitched chaotic sound of the lifeguard’s whistle.” Films like Suspiria, Halloween, and The Exorcist also utilized this technique of alternating minor chords with sudden acoustic attacks in their film scores, particularly their main themes, because these nonlinear sounds “trigger a biologically ingrained response by making us think our young are threatened” (Haggin). Alternatively, films like The Children of the Corn add another layer to their discordant minor chords by coupling them with the sound of indistinct moaning and children singing on a neutral vowel.

Dialogue

Most nonlinear analogues with respect to dialogue are pretty obvious and typically appear in the form of screams, cries, moans, and pleas of the film’s characters. These natural sounds are what we commonly associate with fear and danger in horror movies. Because these nonlinear representations of the voice (i.e. screaming and/or crying) are so typical in horror cinema, horror movie audiences are almost desensitized to its affect. A scream alone is no longer enough to illicit an intense fear response in any but the most timid horror movie audiences. This could be one reason why horror film visuals have become more gruesome in the last decade, even prompting the creation of a new sub-genre devoted fully to extreme visual gore (i.e. “torture porn”). In the film Hostel, filmmaker Eli Roth circumvents this desensitization through the filter of another language. In the film, the protagonist frees a young Japanese woman who has been captured and tortured by a murder-for-profit organization. The scene takes on all too visceral quality when the protagonist’s inability to understand mirrors the audience’s own lack of understanding—we instinctively understand she is begging to be set free, but hearing those pleas in a non-native language is unsettling because it goes against experience.

Aside from natural human vocalizations—like screams—filmmakers use vocal distortions, where natural human and/or animal sounds are pushed beyond their normal range, as a subtle way of eliciting fear in audiences (see fig. 3). In The Exorcism of Emily Rose, during an exorcism sequence toward the end of the film, the sound designers edited Jennifer Carpenter’s voice to make it sound as if two distinct voices were speaking simultaneously—a common attribute of demonic possessions referred to as polyglossic vocals (Winters and Gardner). “That effect was done by having my voice recorded on tape, how I would say it, and then we played that tape so I could jump in and do it the same way, or add to it or overlap my voice with my voice” ("Jennifer Carpenter: The Exorcism of Emily Rose”).

Environmental Ambience and Sound Effects

Two of the most important, and least recognized, aspects of a film’s soundscape are the environmental ambience and the sound effects. “Whilst the affective potential (the ability to evoke an emotional response) of music is a well-established field of research, the equivalent examination into non-musical/non-speech sound (sound effects, ambient sound, etc.) has undergone relatively less investigation” (Garner). That being said, we can look at the research regarding nonlinear analogues in music and voice and apply those same concepts to those of sound effects, with the addition of film acoustic ecology and sound localization; simply stated, how non-musical/non-vocal sounds are experienced within the film’s reality. “The basic premise of an acoustic ecology is that there exist interactions between sound, the listener and the surrounding environment” (Garner).

An audience member can be affected by the sounds within a film in much the same ways that the film’s characters’ experience sound. The audience will identify with the current focal character (i.e. the character or characters experiencing the sound at that given moment). Through this connection, filmmakers can use sound to trigger a fear response within the audience. For example, the audience is watching a character walking along a deserted road in the middle of the night. The scene is populated by very subtle audio cues like the sound of the character’s footsteps along the gravel road, a slight wind blowing through the trees, and the sounds of crickets or other animal noises natural to the environment. As an audience, we are familiar with this ecology, but the visual of being on the road at night might make us feel uneasy because we might have preconceptions about how this scenario will unfold. Suddenly, we—the character and the audience—hear an unexpected noise, like the sound of a car coming toward the character. Even removed from the film reality, the way the sound of the car is presented in the movie will give the audience some idea of its relation within the film space, whether it is near (loud) or far (soft) in relation to the image we are viewing. While the sound of the car itself might not automatically induce a fear response within the audience or the character, the sound of the car coupled with the context of the scene (i.e. the visual setup, the character’s current situation, and the fact that this is a film within the horror genre) helps to trigger a feeling of anxiety. As movie watchers become immersed in the film experience “they become projected into the virtual space” of the characters within the film (Garner). 

The diegetic space of the [film] merges with their living room as the sound is not restricted to a two-dimensional plane and, depending on available technology, can surround them. Consequently, the soundscape reveals information relevant to [the audience] and their position … This, essentially, is what is known as a virtual acoustic ecology, a circumstance in which the audio propagation is artificial and the events/sources of the sound are virtual but there remains an ecological relationship between listener, sound and environment (Garner).

In regard to horror film sound design, any sound that exists within the film reality that is contrary to audience expectation can trigger anxiety within the audience, character, or both. These expectation, by both the viewer and the characters within the film, are driven by context and experience; the meaning behind the sounds comes back to context. “In every perception, a context is formed composed of the sensations being experienced. … Whenever any part of a context appears … that part affects us as though the whole context were present; it serves the function of a sign” (Richards 23-4).

The Emotional Impact of Sound

If we examine the use of sound from a rhetorical perspective, we must look toward the meaning behind the sound, specifically how sounds come to mean what they mean and how people come to those meanings. According to composer and sound artist Martin Stig Anderson, cinematic sounds derive their meaning from their interactions with the visual images displayed on screen. “Our interpretation of the sounds at any given instant relies…entirely on the level of correspondence between sound and image” (Anderson). There are several factors that affect our perceptions of “sound-objects” in cinema: identity, time, space, and close or remote correspondence.

Identity concerns the correspondence between the identity of a sound-object associate with a visual action and the sound we instinctively expect to be produced by that action. More specifically, it relates to the object’s material and intrinsic spacial properties such as texture and size respectively. The expectation as to how a given visual action will sound may be founded on both natural and culturally-related perceptual experiences (Anderson).

In film, when we see a person walking, starting a car, or using a blender, we instinctually associate those visuals with a particular sound and there is an expectation to hear those sounds when the visuals are produced. Time-correspondence is the sound relationship between the timing of the visual action and the associated sound. Time-correspondences in film have two levels. The first level is the timing of the sound as it appears within the visual context. If we see a person walking and hear their footsteps occurring simultaneously, this is timing that takes place within the reality of the film. The second level is the timing of the sound during production of the film and relates to whether the sound was recorded simultaneously with the visuals or was added later during the sound production phase.

[S]pace-correspondence concerns the match between the space implied by auditory and visual cues respectively, in terms of extrinsic spatial properties such as room characteristics and size and the proximity of a given source. … [This audio/visual space] not only refers to the actions taking place within the visual field of the spectator, defined by the screen, but the entire space of the film’s world (Anderson).

For example, if we see a character using a blender and hear the noise associated with this action, then cut to another character in the same cinematic space, we still expect to hear the sound of the blender because the two characters are in a shared cinematic space (Anderson).

Close and remote correspondences result from the proximity in identification, time, and cinematic space of the sound with a visual object it is meant to correspond with or represent. For example, when the sound of footsteps are synchronized with the image of footsteps, we instinctively identify the sound with the image in the same time and cinematic space.

[G]enerally the closer the correspondence, the more that dimension contributes towards making the sound appear as originating from within the image. When, for example, the sound of footsteps 1) reflects plausibly the sonic identity of the shoes and the material being walked on, 2) is synchronized with the movement of the character, and 3) matches the space in which the character is walking, we identify an overall close correspondence between sound and image. Conversely the more remote the overall correspondence between sound and image, the more the sounds are pushed outside of the film’s world (Anderson).

Such remote correspondences can be seen as distortions of a sound’s identity, time, and/or cinematic space in relation to its visual correspondent and can be used by horror filmmakers to “bring credibility to fictitious elements,” stimulate the audience’s fear response, or to alter the audience’s perception of the film’s reality (Anderson). Monster movies—like Alien, King Kong, An American Werewolf in London, Godzilla, etc.—rely on sound to make their creatures more believable. For example, in the film Jurassic Park, the correspondence between the sound and the visual elements generates an overwhelming verisimilitude to the dinosaurs, especially in regard to the tyrannosaurus and the raptors.

Similarly, spatial distortions are notorious stimulants in generating anxiety. When a character hears a noise that seems out of place within the environment—for instance, the character is walking alone along a dirt road in the middle of the night and suddenly hears the sound of children laughing—this creates a feeling of tension because the sound has no visual correspondence, or rather, the visuals are not consistent with audience expectation. Furthermore, remote correspondences are vital in the creation of altered realities, like dream and memory sequences. For example, while not a film of the horror genre, in The Hunger Games there is a sequence where the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is dreaming about the day her father died. During this sequence, there are several moments where the sounds are muted or completely inaudible, leaving only the musical score intact. This is especially powerful during a section where Katniss is inaudibly yelling at her mother to “Don’t just sit there. Look at me!” Not only does the sound of this sequence give the audience audio cues that the reality of the film has shifted, but it also presents Katniss’s psychological perspective in regard to her relationship with her mother; at the discovery of her father’s death, Katniss’s emotional needs went unheard and unheeded by her only remaining parental figure.

Sounds as Symbols

In some cases, “sound may not correspond to image in terms of identity, time and space altogether, [but] it may do so in a symbolic way.” In these instances, filmmakers may rely on a symbol correspondence between the sound and image on screen. This symbolic relationship between audio and visual elements can be “culturally derived or generated within, and thus unique to, a given film” (Anderson). All forms of human communication, both verbal and nonverbal, are a construct of our symbol systems. Words—and, by extension, purposefully composed sounds—are nothing more than symbolic placeholders for the genuine artifacts. This is why language is so powerful, because it makes tangible both the corporeal and incorporeal. In the case of cinema, the horror genre in particular, the filmmaker’s ideologies become tangible when expressed using the symbol system of sound (i.e. ambient sound, musical score, dialogue, and sound effects). When the ideology is something abstract like the concept of fear, identity, sexuality, or alienation for example, sound can be a powerful commodity for solidifying that idea.

According to Kenneth Burke in his essay “Definition of Man”, some symbols become so deeply ingrained within our psychology that the very memory of the symbol produces a biological reaction—for instance, the way horror movies can trigger the physiological symptoms of fear (i.e. muscle tension, elevated heart rate, etc.) The reason for this is simple: substitution is the natural by-product of symbolism (45). "Not only do human beings successfully infer other beings' states of mind from symbolic clues; we know that characteristically, in all societies, build each other's minds" (Fisher 384). When watching a film, we can determine a character's state of mind in a similar fashion from the audio clues within the scene. This is where score, dialogue, and sound effects have the most influence.

Although sound may not correspond to image through identity, time and space altogether, it may do so in a symbolic fashion. By means of culturally generated codes, sound can take part in the moods of the images, it can tell us when to be alert, and through the imitation of musical styles or sound qualities (e.g. analogue distortion) define the (relative) temporal setting of the images (Anderson).

Sound as Metaphor

According to I. A. Richards, the way the brain interprets images and sounds is similar to Richards’ concept of “metaphor”. Certain sounds can mean very specific things to particular individuals or groups of people; similarly, sounds can also trigger a reference to other related sounds, concepts, ideas, and emotions because they share a similar context. Because our thought process is metaphoric—“seeing in one context an aspect similar to that encountered in an earlier context” (Richards 33). Sound designers can use sound to add context/meaning. Our perceptions can be altered or manipulated simply by understating the meaning we association with certain sounds. For example, humans have a natural, biological tendency to feel uneasy or apprehensive at the sound of a baby crying because that sound has a biological meaning. Understanding this, a sound designer can create a sense of unease in their audience by manipulating or replicating that sound. Such an example of this type of manipulation can be observed in the film Ghosts starring Patrick Swazye (see fig. 5). In the scenes where the murderers are dragged away by dark apparitions, the moaning wails of these “spirits” were produced by manipulating the sound of infants crying. By slowing down and lowering the pitch of the sound, the sound designers were able to create the sound that later defines these beings. Instinctively, most people find this “wailing” disturbing because it is playing on our natural biological reaction to crying infants by distorting the context of the sound.

Conclusion

An examination of musical scores, dialogues, and sound effects reveals more than just the impact of sound on horror film audience, specifically how sound can impact the emotional state of the viewer and trigger instinctive physiological reactions, but also opens door to understanding how filmmakers use sound to manipulate the audience toward specific aims. This can be seen in how filmmakers subtly alter the audience’s perceptions within the film’s reality by evoking our instinctual responses to nonlinear sounds. More research is needed to truly explore the depths of sound in regard to horror films and movies in general, for a more deeper understanding of how biology, psychology, and social conditioning all contribute to the concept of fear as symbol, metaphor, and conversation.

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Media Cited

“78/52”. Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe. YouTube, 4 Apr. 2017. Streaming Video.

Children of the Corn. Dir. Fritz Kiersch. Perf. Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong. New World Pictures, 1984. DVD.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Dir. Scott Derrickson. Perf. Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo. Screen Gems, 2005. DVD.

The Exorcist. Dir. William Friedkin. Perf. Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Linda Blair. Warner Bros., 1973. DVD.

Ghost. Dir. Jerry Zucker. Perf. Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg. Paramount Pictures, 1990. DVD.

Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tony Moran. Compass International Pictures, 1978. DVD.

Hostel. Dir. Eli Roth. Perf. Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Eythor Gudjonsson. Lions Gate Films, 2005. DVD.

The Hunger Games. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson. Lions Gate, 2012. Streaming Video.

Jaws. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss. Universal Pictures, 1975. DVD.

Jurassic Park. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum. Universal Pictures, 1993. DVD.

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles. Paramount Pictures, 1960. DVD.

Suspiria. Dir. Dario Argento. Perf. Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci. International Classics, 1977. DVD.

“Why Do Things Sound Scary?” Dir. Joe Hanson. Perf. Joe Hanson. It's Okay to Be Smart. PBS Digital Studios, 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.