Upon its release in 1922, Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s legendary novel Dracula, was subtitled “A Symphony of Horror”. Be it coincidence or fate, Robin Carolan’s score for Robert Eggers’ 2024 remake certainly mirrors that phrase with a terrifying ode to the atonal lustre of Béla Bartók and Krystof Penderecki. It’s been over fifty years since William Friedkin used the latter’s work in The Exorcist, and through homage and mimicking, the effect has been diluted. However, Carolan’s music is an intense return to that nightmarish sound, and it rarely allows you time to breathe.
There’s a moment in the new Nosferatu when one of several motifs plays almost as a respite from the sheer wall of sound the score thrusts upon you. It’s a welcome break, a moment of beauty yet sadness, and a breather from the unremitting dread. But just as the beguiling melody begins to calm you, the moment is pulled without warning into the black pools of madness, the space where Count Orlok operates. It’s telling you there is no respite, no escape, and you imagine Carolan and Eggers sniggering as they devise various ways to make you feel trapped.
Not that it’s a simple scary score. There’s an ambiguity in Nosferatu, with the repeating motifs syncing with the story’s themes of fate and obsession, and what we initially categorise as horror is also romantic, often beautiful. We’re so used to the banality of beauty that we’re force fed in various media that we often don’t recognise the divine in ugliness, in terror. There are moments that are lyrical and haunting, and which have the sense of a force pulling everything to a moment of predestination. We feel the grip, something expressed not only narratively but also metaphysically.
The motifs are simple in representative terms, but also fractured. Like fragments of a spell, layers in a beautifully constructed sonic nightmare. The score feels contemporary in its writing, but its colours suggest a far more complicated palette than usual, with an orchestra built of sixty string players, harp, woodwinds, percussion, a variety of ancient horns and pipes, and, of course, a choir. Carolan’s use of the choir is wonderfully inventive at times, and often panic-inducing. The low-frequency male voices can be horrifying, breathy and sickly and yet seductive, which conjures a sense of claustrophobia so powerful you’ll look around to make sure your walls aren’t actually closing in.
The thing with horror scores – and Nosferatu is no exception – is that they often have short cues ending in a cacophonous crescendo, and it can feel repetitive when listening to them on their own. It’s also a long album, not far off eighty minutes (which I presume is the full score), and the double-disc CD has extra tracks that aren’t on the four-side LP, so the time constraints of the vinyl record might lead to a better listening experience. But it’s a minor nitpick. Robin Carolan has created a fascinating and challenging soundtrack as likely to delight as much as it will terrify.