Ten Horror Movie Tracks You Must Have On Your Halloween Playlist

Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Editor

My Halloween playlists are a few of my proudest accomplishments, not just because I love the genre so much and not because I feel I have the perfect playlist, but precisely because I always find new additions to build onto the list every year.

I love the spooky season, and nothing makes visiting Halloween attractions better than listening to horror movie soundtracks to put me in the mood for a haunted house or any type of Halloween event.

The following are tracks from horror movies that I suspect may not be on everyone’s Halloween playlist but should be if you’re looking to build it out for the perfect playlist.

Importantly, I’m not going to bother listing the obvious choices. You already have the title tracks from Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, Candyman, etc. I don’t need to tell you why you must have them on your playlist.

I’m here to tell you the underrated tracks you may not have simply because you didn’t know about them.

The criteria are simple:

1)    Would this music scare you while walking through a haunted house?

2)    Have you heard it less than 1,000 times in your adult life?

I won’t go too obscure here: chances are you know about some of these tracks. But these may be tracks you were aware of watching the movie but didn’t realize what gems they were listening to outside the movie.

Let’s go (this list is in no particular order)

1)      Pas De Deux (Us)

a.       I liked Us more than Get Out, partially because its usage of Pas De Deux is nothing short of genius. Jordan Peele spoke about how he chose to remix a classic rap song into a horror song because Us is about the duality of humans, how just a little twist of the core of someone, or a song, can make something completely different. I would be curious to see other artists attempt this with other music classics, but Pas De Deux would be at the top of any future list.

2)      Masked Ball (Eyes Wide Shut)

a.       Musica Ricercata, II from Eyes Wide Shut is excellent (and if you want to scare someone, play it when they’re in a creepy basement with all the lights off), but this is the masterpiece of the soundtrack. It is the most messed up track I can ever remember, partially because it is literally messed up (it’s a recording of an Romanian Orthodox ceremony played backward), but the rhythmic chanting of the robed figures in the movie is so damn over the top, it makes a legitimate orgy creepy. It’s no small feat.

3)      Sinister (Sinister)

a.       It felt like haunted house parks decided they could only pick either the Hello Zepp track from Saw or this track, and Hello Zepp always won. Hello Zepp is an all time track (I’m just assuming you have this already in your playlist, like Halloween, Nightmare Elm Street, etc), but the Sinister theme absolutely belongs in the conversation. Like Hello Zepp, it’s a scary yet entertaining track, and there should be way more remixes of it like Hello Zepp.

4)      The Fog (The Fog)

a.       A great track from John Carpenter, repetitive, yet not really, as Carpenter ever so slightly changes a note, the scale, or the rhythm of the repeating “chorus”. A great track to play on a loop for a haunted house or for trick-or-treaters.

5)      What Went We (The Witch)

a.       The movie that got me hooked on Andrew Eggers, the title track here makes such good use of the nyckelharpa (yep, that’s a real instrument) that your veins feel like they’re tight as a drum listening to it.

6)      The Hide and Seek Song (Hide and Seek)

a.       Songs from the 20s and 30s always work as a device to provoke creepiness in the movie’s atmosphere. The movie ‘Ready Or Not’ used a song that sounded from these decades effectively to foreshadow the impending doom that awaited the family. This won’t work on a loop or as a random track to play in a haunted attraction, but in the right spot, it’s perfect.

7)      Rampage (Halloween Kills)

a.   It’s sad that Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends are such bad movies because the lack of quality really diminishes what great soundtracks both movies have, scored by John Carpenter. I highly recommend adding both soundtracks in their entirety to your playlist, but Rampage is my favorite of the two movies, with an eclectic mix of different beats intermingling together as a background to the boogeyman rendering his judgment on his victims.

8)      Baptism (Saw III)

a.       Hello Zepp is the star track of this franchise, but Baptism is the hidden creepy gem; never too loud or boisterous, but a subdued track that induces dread if you’re walking around an unknown area at night.

9)      Stonehenge (Halloween 3)

a.       So most horror fans know that Halloween 3 has a sneaky good soundtrack, with most pointing to Chariots of Pumpkins as the best. Having seen this movie 100 times, while Chariots of Pumpkins is great, along with First Chase, Stonehenge is my favorite, with the booming synthesizer and the monotone beats never being interrupted to bring a feeling of hopelessness, like what Dr. Challis felt having Conal Cochran’s grand plans revealed for planetary genocide.

10)   World War Z (World War Z)

a.       So, this isn’t a horror movie, but more a popcorn movie with some horror parts to it. I enjoyed this movie more than most, probably because I never read the books, but one of the things I liked about it was how, much like The Walking Dead, it created a thrilling sense of hopelessness that nothing could be done to stop the zombie outbreak, and the theme song imparts that hopeless very effectively. I'm still surprised this isn’t played at haunted attractions more.

Let me know what other great horror movie tracks I should add to my playlist on X @onscreenblog.