Whether it is creepily quiet or explosively loud – or even totally silent – great sound design isn't just an add-on to a movie's visuals. Sound can be a character in its own right, forming an essential part of the story, setting and atmosphere.
We've picked out a quartet of thrilling movies that showcase the power of sound to build heart-stopping tension.
A combination of sound effects, innovative techniques and intriguing music draws the audience into the cinematic experience. Make sure your home cinema system's audio setup is at its best for these great-sounding movies – you won't believe your ears.
Das Boot
One of the unforgettable images of Wolfgang Petersen's critically-acclaimed 1981 war film is the sight of a submarine crew staring at nothing, desperately straining their ears to hear an enemy they can't see.
Confined in the U-Boat that both protects them and traps them, the crew of sweaty, nervous submariners wait in nerve-shredding silence as the churning engines of a destroyer rumble eerily above them.
The agonising tension is heightened by metallic creaks and nervous whispers – until their world explodes with the roar of depth charges exploding, the hull bursting and water blasting them.
Stream on BFI Player via Amazon Prime Video (UK) or Fubo TV (US), or rent or buy the longer Director's Cut.
Gravity
![Gravity - Official Main Trailer [2K HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/OiTiKOy59o4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Like Das Boot, Gravity is a film about being confined inside a hostile environment – in this case, Sandra Bullock is a lone astronaut trying to survive a desperate journey in space. In space, there is no air, and therefore no sound, but Alfonso Cuarón's 2013 film embraces the sound of silence.
The sound team, including sound designer and editor Glenn Freemantle, emphasised vibrations to portray what astronauts might "hear" through their spacesuits, while Bullock's ragged breathing inside her helmet places us right there with her in this terrifying experience.
During the opening storm of deadly debris, instead of explosive booms we hear dull thuds and muffled impacts, as if transmitted through the characters' helmets and bodies. The silence is augmented by Stephen Price's unsettling score, including music that's been eerily slowed down or unnervingly distorted.
Gravity is available to stream on Now TV (UK) and Amazon Prime Video (US).
The Birds
The plot of The Birds sounds pretty silly: a town is besieged by, well, loads of birds. But in the hands of master director Alfred Hitchcock, this feathered flick becomes a tense and terrifying thriller.
Key to the increasingly menacing atmosphere is the soundtrack, made up of electronic noise instead of conventional film music - an innovative breakthrough for a film made in 1963.
Composer Oskar Sala used an early electronic instrument called the Mixtur-Trautonium to create unsettling bird shrieks and noises, with these synthesised birdcalls and natural sound building a palpable sense of dread.
The Birds is available to stream on Now TV (UK).
Blow Out
No discussion of film and sound is complete without mention of Brian De Palma's Blow Out. John Travolta plays an audio engineer who makes movie sound effects, only to get sucked into a deadly conspiracy through a crime he's accidentally recorded.
Not only is it literally about a sound engineer, but this suspenseful 1981 thriller is all about sound and how we experience it: the film is a love letter to analog sound design, with real-time mixing, reel-to-reel tape editing and spatial re-creation of sound events all key to the plot.
You can stream Blow Out on MGM Plus via Amazon Prime Video (UK, US) or Fubo TV (US), or pick up the Criterion Collection 4K restoration to make the most of a 4K restoration with a crisp and nuanced 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack.
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