The first feature I ever scored was the Vietnamese horror film “Chung Cu Ma.” I was 26, fresh out of working at Remote Control Productions under Heitor Pereira as a tech, and itching to flex my full creative powers to create something truly memorable. This was when I really started to find my own voice in composing, using my erhu, also known as the Dan Nhi in Vietnam, as a connecting thread throughout the 70-minute score which featured individual themes for each major character.

For the climactic scene where the body of the woman whose ghost haunts the apartment is discovered beneath the floorboards, I knew the haunting voice of Melissa R Kaplan, who I’d been listening to for 10 years as part of Splashdown and Universal Hall Pass would be perfect, so I started what has become a tradition with every project: I reach out to my heroes.

Melissa agreed to sing for the project, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Hauntingly beautiful, yet aching and full of regret, the music I wrote could barely do her voice justice:

I love a good horror story, especially one based on real events. Thất Sơn Tâm Linh (also known as Kumanthong) was inspired by the infamous “Thiên Linh Cái” murders, a real serial killing case that occurred in Vietnam in the late 1990s.

The killer was Phạm Văn Tuấn, who posed as a healer and spiritual practitioner and abused the trust of his victims, particularly women, by luring them under the pretext of treatment. His actions involved ritualistic practices linked to “Thiên Linh Cái,” a form of occult black magic, and the eventual discovery of bodies and skeletal remains near his property shocked communities across the Mekong Delta.

The killer (played in the film by the charismatic Quang Tuấn) chanted a melody based on the buddhist mantra “Asato Ma Sad Gamaya,” while doing his rituals, which I realized was perfect for his theme. I created several different versions of that theme: charming, horrifying, even one based on Nirvana (the band, playing on the dual association with Buddhism), but here it is in an orchestral thriller version, when he suddenly snaps and decides to dig a tunnel under his house to hide the remains of his future victims - an irreversible turn that propels the story into its darkest territory:

The third Vietnamese horror film I scored was an anthology built around three of Vietnam’s most famous urban legends, classic “ghost stories,” each set in a different decade, beginning in the 1970s. To anchor the first segment in its era, the studio, ProductionQ, licensed the iconic ghost-themed song “Đừng Bỏ Em Một Mình”, which was hugely popular at the time. However, because of the complex copyright status surrounding pre-revolution media, the original recording couldn’t be used.

To solve this, we set out to recreate the song with a truly authentic period sound. I rebuilt it from the ground up using vintage production techniques, collaborating with singer Thúy Huyền and drummer Nate Laguzza, and recording live brass parts that I performed myself. The result was a faithful yet freshly produced version that fit seamlessly into the film’s world. You can hear the opening of the song in the trailer below, which I also had the pleasure of scoring:

After scoring Chung Cu Ma, its producer, Hang Trinh had became a lifelong friend. I collaborated with her on 2 other films in Vietnam, both comedies: Kungfu Pho and 12 Chòm Sao: Ve Duong Cho Yêu Chay, and the films we collaborated on caught the attention of other Vietnamese filmmakers, especially horror ones. When Hang asked me to score her directorial debut: a sequel to the Korean classic Muoi: The Legend of a Portrait, I said yes immediately.

For each horror film I score, I create a unique sonic identity tied to the story. Since this film’s ghost haunts a painting, I used paintbrushes to “play” the instruments, pushing the score toward sound design over traditional music:

Muoi was one of the most beautifully shot horror pictures I’ve ever seen, and starred the magnetic and beautiful Chi Pu- an actor/singer who played a minor character in Chung Cu Ma 8 years prior, but had since risen to stardom in Vietnam due in equal parts to her singing and acting career. Since it felt like reuniting old friends, I once again asked Melissa R Kaplan to sing the vocals for the trailer, scored in the classic “creepy song” style:

The fifth Vietnamese horror film I scored was the sequel to Kumanthong, called Đảo Độc Đắc. Though its story picked up where the final events of the previous film left off, the director, cast, characters, and style were all different, and it needed its own sonic identity different from the previous film.

This film was set on an island, and I used the major theme of water in crafting the score. I filled bowls of water in my studio and recorded the sounds of dripping and sloshing water in them, played a waterphone in every way possible, and experimented with half-submerging instruments to give them dying, watery tones: