Christopher Young (Part 2)

The composer of Hellraiser and Sinister on his favorite scores, the importance of dissonance, and trying to capture the universe in sound

Sinister (2012) is often cited as one of the most frightening horror films of modern times.

“The music entices you into this dark world in ways that only music can do.”

KS: Do you think you have a trademark sound?

CY: I’ve been very fortunate to work in films of all shapes and sizes, of all genres. The only genre of film that I’ve not worked in is animated. I’ve done comedies, black comedies, action films, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romantic mystery, mystery – here, there, and everywhere. And because my brain thinks musically in so many ways, I’m told, “Oh, Chris when you did the score for The Shipping News and then The Hurricane and then for Sinister, I still hear the same guy there.” And I go, “Really? Tell me about it. What do you hear?” So there must be something there. It is coming out of one brain. And though I’m moving anywhere from heavy metal rock in one movie to an Irish pennywhistle-driven ensemble, there’s a similarity there. Now in my work in horror movies, I would say that a similar effort is made for the scores to illuminate something; some aspect of the movie. The language in which I do it changes, but I’m always trying as best I can to allow the music to offer a window into this invisible, intangible world of the unknown that sits behind every image that we see. I’m paraphrasing H.P. Lovecraft, but he said the oldest emotion known to man is fear, and the greatest fear of them all is that of the unknown. And I kind of like that.

I’m not in fact a tremendous fan of pure horror films. I don’t like to write music to scare people. There are times when I have no choice, that I need to do that, but the moment in movies that I work on that I’m most excited about is when the music is able to capture that world that H.P. Lovecraft is talking about: that invisible world that exists out over the horizon, out above us, in the sky, behind the corner, around the corner. Ssomething that we can’t quite see but we know, we sense is out there. Certainly when I was a kid that was always something that fascinated me. It wasn’t what was here, it was what was not necessarily