Vibrations of Fear: A Listening from No me sigas

Hi there. So, today… honestly, today I have the perfect excuse to bring up a topic that’s been circling in my head for a while.

Since Weapons, I hadn’t had the chance to talk about something close to the horror genre, and this week, we’re finally here.

And although maybe the Christmas songs have already started playing, I think we can still take this episode as the closing of the so-called “spooky season.”

Last week, I went to see the Mexican film No me sigas, and I think it’s one of those works that make you say, “Damn… it’s really awesome to be Mexican”—as if I had participated in making it, haha. But well, you get what I mean.

The thing is, No me sigas is a Mexican horror proposal that awakens every sense. And for this channel, the one we focus on and chase, we already know it’s the musical one.

For this soundtrack, we have the work of a Mexican composer—actually, the third Mexican featured in this podcast, which makes me really happy. Craig Davis was in charge of this soundtrack and, from what I understand, many other sound elements as well.

I’ve always thought that, because something is labeled as “horror,” we often overlook or underestimate the music in these productions. It’s rare for music in this genre to receive public recognition. But watching this film made me realize how mistaken we are—perhaps even culturally.

To explain this, I think I have to tell a bit about my personal experience with the genre—not to center myself, but in hopes that I’m not the only one who’s felt this way, and that maybe it helps follow the thread I want to propose.

About a decade ago, I promised myself I would never watch a horror film again—for reasons as simple but huge as my peace of mind. Yes, I’m part of that percentage of people who divorced this genre long ago. And those who know me can confirm it’s true.

Anyway, horror has endured through time thanks to arguments that, while powerful, have also become familiar—things like, “We consume horror to feel alive,” or “Horror sharpens the senses.” And now, I think horror goes beyond that.

Horror relies on multiple senses—and I promise I’ll link this to music—but first, horror is many things: a fertile space for creation and a space that projects and dissects the networks of meaning that compose society’s vulnerabilities. In simpler terms: horror portrays collective anxieties and memories, along with their roots—biopower, control, isolation, and so on. And precisely those anxieties are sonically and collectively encoded: the buzzing, the constant noise, the silence itself.

This genre, and all the codes it internalizes, gives rise to cultural practices of identification through people’s most vulnerable angles.

So, what about the music? Well, the music draws the blueprint that holds everything together—the base, the stability of the premise. In simple terms: when the most striking events happen in the story, what do you do? I think the audience, by natural reaction—almost reflexively—closes their eyes. And what remains? Exactly: the music.

That way, music becomes the element that coats the entire narrative idea—the emotional texture, the sensory guide. And it’s eerie, because in this genre in particular, that potential resource “melts into the narrative” as its very intention… like the subtlety of possession itself.

In No me sigas, several strange sound elements are introduced—ones that fit perfectly with what the horror genre symbolizes for the future of cinema: its renewal and reconfiguration through the social questioning that these narratives provoke. By creating and shaping sensations from the most specific elements—like vibrating devices—the music in horror films, especially in this one, forces us to stay. Here, through those disruptive codes—a buzz, a dissonance, a frequency—the music deconstructs traditional forms in favor of the sensory network proposed by the film, and by the intention of horror cinema itself: vertigo, questioning, and emotional confrontation.

After watching No me sigas, it’s clear to me that music in horror films must not be underestimated or trivialized, because it becomes the backbone of these productions—which themselves act as creative laboratories that counterpoint, strain, and sometimes fracture what identifies us as human: stability.

And while it identifies us as human, another key trait constantly in tension within these productions is change—and all change, I think, is born from this struggle, this counterpoint with reality and vulnerability. That’s exactly what music embodies here.

And speaking of “creative laboratories,” the freedom this genre allows also encourages a critical kind of listening—where the implementation of sound and the composition of music can emerge from the most everyday objects, but still remain tied to the narrative. I might not be mistaken—and it’d be interesting to question this—but it’s possible our composer here used elements outside the usual norms to connect sound with the film’s atmosphere. For instance, this story takes place in a context where technology is part of daily life—cell phone notifications, social media cues—which then become a fundamental part of the characters’ identity.

So, in horror films—or at least in this one—music creates frequencies and vibrations that intertwine with a material dimension of the character’s identity, almost like an affective vibration. And that’s powerful, because this materiality-identity symbiosis orchestrates a space where horror and music create a kind of “cartesian plane,” a sonic capillary dimension that reconfigures the DNA of how we approach cinematic experience.

Through sound elements as naturalized as buzzing, breathing, and vibrations, the audience is unanchored from logic and placed inside the film’s proposal—which, more than being a film, is a proposal of disruption. The music allows the audience to be permeated by this break in logic—to have no escape—and to become woven into the emotional vibration being narrated.

In other words, music is the resource that creates that sensory “closure.” It’s the door with a double function: it gives access and prevents the spectator from escaping the reflections and vertigo being proposed.

So, I think it’s important to reflect on the sounds presented here—the ones that make us tremble and jump. What form and what spectrum do those unsettling sounds take? What do they represent? Where do they come from? These are the kinds of questions we should ask ourselves when choosing to enter these narratives—because, in the dark, who guides us, and who breaks us?

So yes, the music in this kind of film undoubtedly becomes the regulator that coordinates sensations—a sonic system that organizes and encodes fear, emotional vertigo, and collective anxieties. In other words: it reshapes the way we feel fear.

In its architecture, horror isn’t heard to scare, but to reveal and unfold fragilities.

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