What makes scary music scary?

The science behind the spookiest soundtracks

Image via Max Pixel

A scary movie would be far less scary without its soundtrack. Close your ears during the most tense scenes, and they become almost boring. Take this recut of the trailer for The Shining as a happy family movie (“Shining”). It’s funny partly because of the voice-over, but mainly because of the happy Peter Gabriel music at the end. It works the other way around as…