#4. It Taps Into Primal Fear
OK, imagine how you would sound for a second if you saw your friend Jason across the street and wanted to get his attention by yelling his name. Now imagine you see your friend Jason across the street, suddenly realize a car is careening down the road about to hit him, and shout his name to warn him.
Despite the fact that you are yelling the same thing both times, even in your head you can hear how the two sound different. Human beings have a very good, very nuanced sense of what kind of noise indicates a greeting and what kind of noise indicates you are about to be mauled by a honey badger. And that sense is being used against you in every scary movie you have ever seen. There is a reason that horror films scare the crap out of us, and it’s not just the creepy settings, dramatic buildup and sudden reveal of the bad guy RIGHT BEHIND YOU. It’s the music.
How the hell does music do that?
There are certain sounds that humans will automatically associate with sudden and painful death because they tap into our evolutionary fear of the screams of other animals (and other human beings). Screams of fear in almost any animal are made up of what scientists have dubbed “discordant noises.” Any noise that makes you feel very unpleasant falls into this category. We know if we hear other living things making those discordant noises that we have to get the fuck out, because something bad is going to happen.
Movie directors know this and make good use of it when deciding on the score for a film. That dramatic buildup and subsequent scary reveal is almost always accompanied by really freaky music or somebody screaming his ass off (or both).
But this technique is hardly limited to horror movies. Music sets the mood for all scenes. Can you imagine a Tom and Jerry song on a sombre movie? hardly convincing.
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