Sound design is an often underappreciated aspect of filmmaking, with horror movies like Undertone (2026) doing a great job of highlighting just how effective minor noise and unexpected silence can be at making audiences scream. Some of the best horror movies are the ones that blend different approaches to filmmaking to great effect, going beyond just gory kills or monstrous designs. And sometimes the best scares aren’t even visual in nature.
This is where sound design really comes into play, as an unnatural noise can make an audience squirm in their seat or jump in surprise. Even the lack of sound can be a useful tool, as it can lure a viewer into a false sense of security or reinforce tension. Horror movies have used sound in different ways to flesh out their world and land their scares, with some of the best being the ones that really catch the viewers' attention by surprise. To celebrate the release of Undertone, here are 6 other amazing uses of sound design in horror films. Catch them now on Apple TV, Prime Video, and more!
Undertone (2026)
Undertone is a uniquely engaging horror movie that primarily uses sound design to earn most of its biggest scares. Largely set in a single house and focused on one half of a paranormal podcast, Undertone follows the show’s chronicling of a supposedly cursed series of voice recordings that a couple took.
The film makes sound design and editing integral to the plot, as their efforts to investigate the audio actually serves as plot beats. The movie is able to mine the ambient noise to great effect, especially when it fuses with unnerving elements of the supernatural. Similar to other recent movies that use sound to great effect like Keeper (2025) or The Black Phone (2022), Undertone is able to use the actual noise of the real world and infuse it with just enough unsettling touches to make it truly memorable.
The Shining (1980)
One of the best horror movies of all time, The Shining, works as well as it does for a lot of reasons—but the most subtle is the way the film uses quiet noises and empty halls to terrific effect.
Set in a remote hotel that a family of three is tasked with maintaining through the dead of winter, the cast’s gradual descent into madness amid the hauntings of the hotel are personified through some effective imagery and spot-on sound design. There’s a particular scratching, skittering sound effect that quietly replicates the feeling of someone losing their mind, a subtly effective touch that pays off in the latter half of the film when it becomes the primary percussion of the more overt score and scares as the Torrances realize the full situation that they are in.
Annihilation (2018)
A dense, trippy sci-fi film that is best when it is exploring the more surreal aspects of being trapped in a space between regular reality and something else, Annihilation benefits from some truly creative approaches to sound design. Part of the terror in this film stems from the way the natural world has been subverted and corrupted by the mysterious alien force that the film’s main characters are investigating.
A bear crying out in the voice of the teammate it consumed is one of the most unsettling things in the entire film, and the larger sci-fi genre of this period. Many of director Alex Garland’s other films, like Ex Machina (2015) and Men (2022), also use sound to great effect. However, it’s Annihilation that finds a way to make it the scariest part of the movie.
A Quiet Place (2018)
A Quiet Place is entirely rooted in sound as a means of frightening the audience and endangering the characters, so there was no way it wasn’t going to get on this list. The inventive approach to horror puts emphasis on the danger that making noise can bring when predators who are largely driven by noise are nearby.
This means that every creak, grunt, or scream is asking for trouble, with the movie able to naturally shift from silent to deafening when one of the creatures goes on the move. It’s a brutal film with some gorgeous elements, and the follow-ups—the direct sequel A Quiet Place Part II (2021) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)—all do great work with the premise as well. Still, there’s something especially effective about how the first film uses a deft mix of silence and screaming to novel effect.
Eraserhead (1977)
One of David Lynch’s most iconic films, Eraserhead’s sound design is a big part of what makes the movie so effective. The surreal horror film incorporates an industrial soundscape that matches the tone and tenor of the grim fantasy film. David Lynch and his collaborators made sure to use everyday noises like steam, wind, and electricity, only amplified and stretched out to be overwhelming and overpowering.
Coupled with the movie's eerie score, the sound design in Eraserhead is a big part of what makes the movie so memorably creepy and deeply effective as a horror story. Where Lynch’s other frightening films like Mulholland Drive (2001) are more rooted in turning the real world into a horrifying space, Eraserhead uses aspects of average day life but amplifies them just right to make them absolutely haunting.
Nope (2022)
Jordan Peele’s horror movies have been stunning since he made his feature-length debut with Get Out (2017), but the most effective from a purely audio standpoint has to be his sci-fi film, Nope (2022). Focusing on a pair of horse-wrangling siblings who discover that their ranch is in the flight path of a mysterious entity that has been sucking up various things to consume, Nope feels like the unholy fusion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Jaws (1975), especially in the latter half.
The sound design for the film is impeccable, from the haunting beauty of rain to the strange indicators of the creature’s presence. The scariest sound moments come when the camera briefly reveals what it’s like to have been consumed by the entity, with the cacophony of noises serving as a particularly nightmarish aspect of the movie’s sound design.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
A terrific horror movie all around, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is best remembered for one haunting noise that comes right at the end of the film, speaking to the power of good sound design in filmmaking. A remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the second film based on Jack Finney's book of the same name uses its story about a parasitic alien race gradually replacing and impersonating people to tell an unforgettable story of paranoia and terror.
One of the best aspects of the film's design is the way the transformed people are given a distinctive high-pitched scream, which serves as the ultimate tell of their transformed state. The final moments of the film uses that sound to amazing effect, and remains one of the single best uses of sound for scary effect in the history of film. If you love sci-fi horror, then this is the movie to see—and make sure you have the sound turned all the way up, just so that final moment can really pop.
