From Dave Grohl to Joe Talbot: your favourite musicians pick their favourite horror film
Sleepless nights, palpitations, and soiled pants ensure that horror movies are admittedly not everyone’s bag. While some are seemingly obsessed with being freaked out and scared the absolute shit out of, others simply cannot stand the jumps, jitters, raised heart rate and dilated pupils, nor the sight of some ghoul behind your shower curtain once the cinematic nightmare is finally over.
However, it is that very ‘transcendent’ aspect that means they’re also a constant source of inspiration. They are an art form that you can’t ignore, refusing to be banal or boring at any turn, even if they are also often beset by recurring tropes.
So, it is perhaps unsurprising that several musicians have revealed themselves to be fans of horror over the years, none more so than Dave Grohl, who once admitted the influence of John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween on his own career. The film’s score, which is universally admired, helped Grohl to understand the musical concept of polyrhythm.
In fact, Grohl got his teeth stuck into the horror genre on an even more creative level with Studio 666, a 2022 horror comedy musical in which his Foo Fighters bandmates, including the late Taylor Hawkins, starred. The film centred on Foo Fighters moving to a mansion to record a new album, only to find the house haunted.
However, the ex-Nirvana drummer is not the only musical star to have expressed a love for horror. So, from Grohl to Blanck Mass via Slash and Rina Sawayama, here are the top horror picks from six notable musicians.
The favourite horror movies of six musicians:
Dave Grohl: The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
Nirvana and Foo Fighters icon Dave Grohl is a great admirer of Robert Eggers’ The Witch. The 2015 folk horror was Eggers’ feature-length directorial debut and starred Anya Taylor-Joy in a 1630s tale of a Puritan family’s plight against the evils that live in the woods beyond their village. It’s brooding, beautifully shot, and thought-provoking to boot.
“That film is not only beautiful and a work of great actors and a great director, but, man, there’s something about a good Salem witch possession that will always scare me more than any Saw movie or any Ring movie,” Grohl said of The Witch. “I’ve watched that movie fifty fucking times; I love that film.”
Slash: The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
Guns N’ Roses hero Slash likes several horror films, but amongst them all, one, in particular, stands out: the 1976 classic – The Omen. The film showed the violent deaths and strange events that surround a family whose surrogate son Damien is actually the Antichrist. In true Slash fashion, it doesn’t get much more ‘classic’ horror than this.
Slash said of the film, “I think The Omen is the first one on my list. It was a movie that I saw when it came out. So I had to have been, I’m not sure, probably 8 or 9 years old or something like that. It’s Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. It is a major motion picture. It’s no
Joe Talbot, IDLES: The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)
Idles’ Joe Talbot finds a place in his terrified heart for the film that began the “found footage” trope in contemporary horror, The Blair Witch Project. The 1999 cult classic tells of three student filmmakers making a documentary about a local folktale known as the Blair Witch, which turns out to be more accurate than they had first anticipated.
“I felt trapped in the cinema, and I remember it sat with me for days,” Talbot admitted. “It was also the first website I ever went on. It took five minutes to load, and I remember sitting patiently in the school library with my friend as we argued as to whether it was real or not. I think its verisimilitude is something that I strive for with my art.”
Zola Jesus – Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008)
Nika Roza Danilova, AKA Zola Jesus, picks out arguably the least-known film on this list, the 2008 French psychological horror Martyrs. The film focuses on Lucie, who seeks revenge on those who abducted and tortured her as a child, and Anna, another victim of abuse.
The film got an American remake in 2015.While discussing her love for Martyrs, Danilova said, “It’s just so unique. It’s not so much about the traditional horror aspects that I love, but the philosophical undertones, which makes it so great. I watched it for the first time several years ago, around when it came out. I was going on a horror binge, but this movie just stuck out. I became obsessed with it.”
Rina Sawayama – Ring (Hideo Nakta, 1998)
While many of us know the 2002 American remake, Rina Sawayama holds a special reverence for the 1998 Japanese original version of Ring. The film follows a reporter who is investigating a strange videotape that curses anyone who watches it, making them die seven days after they do so. In an odd way, there is even a sentiment of modern ‘viral’ culture in the undercurrent of the scares.
“Ring was the first horror movie I watched,” Sawayama said. “I was, like, seven, and I related to Sadako; she’s sad and never washes her hair. I think it taught me never to trust Hollywood remakes of Asian classics. On a creative note, I really want to recreate the TV scene in a music video – I tried to in a previous video but didn’t have the budget to make it look good.”
Blanck Mass – Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987)
Benjamin Power, AKA Blanck Mass, selects the iconic 1987 picture Hellraiser as his favourite horror film—why wouldn’t he? The British horror flick centres on a strange puzzle box that summons malevolent inter-dimensional beings known as the Cenobites, who cannot tell the difference between pleasure and pain. This masochistic tale came to define the iconography of 1980s horror, where suddenly, leather became very synonymous with spookiness.
“The symbolism, the bleakness, the uncompromising disregard for another’s life. It’s almost more depressing than it is scary,” said the stern Power. “The first time I saw it, I must have been about eight years old. I was visiting my dad in Cambridge, and he let us watch it one night while I was there. I can’t say that the film itself had any impact on my music, but drama and narrative are two very important aspects in my work and horror movie soundtracks are often great examples of this.”
