Film soundtracks are expertly crafted to influence and manipulate our emotions. They have the power to make us laugh, cry and even cover our eyes in fear. For scary film scenes, the terrifying music accompanying them is often described as “scream-like”. A well-known example is Bernard Herrmann’s violent, shrieking violin cue that accompanies the infamous shower murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960). Although “scream-like” is a common descriptor, how similarly do these scary film soundtrack excerpts actually sound to real human screams? Do composers imitate key acoustic features of human screams to scare us? In this presentation, we will look at examples from horror film soundtracks and accessible reports on acoustic analyses and psychological research to find out how film composers can use synthetic musical versions of human vocal sounds to communicate similar emotional meanings.