Trent Reznor’s horror recommendations range from Halloween and The Descent to Saint Maud, Nope and Titane, according to fan compilations of his posts on the official Nine Inch Nails Discord. The compilations are fan-made, and they don’t fully agree.
Fans date the horror recommendations to October 2022. A Reddit compilation posted on October 18, 2023, and a Letterboxd list published the next day share titles including The Descent, Halloween and The Fly. Reznor’s recommendations collected by the fans also include The Thing and Phantasm.
There’s a distinction worth keeping when building a watchlist: the Letterboxd compiler separates Reznor’s recommendations from Cronenberg films he specifically said he loved and movies suggested by fans that he only liked. The compilations shouldn’t be treated as a definitive ranking of his favorites.
Halloween has a more directly documented place in his life. In 2017, Reznor recalled seeing it at 13 and being “forever changed.”
He told John Carpenter: “John Carpenter, it’s your fault that I turned out the way I did.” Reznor and Atticus Ross released their own recording of Carpenter’s Halloween theme that October.
Titane also appears in an earlier account of his Discord activity. On April 30, 2022, Reznor said he loved the film and advised that it was “best to watch with no idea what it is.”
His interest in David Cronenberg extends to Dead Ringers. Speaking at the Queer premiere in November 2024, Reznor described its “incredible sense of dread” as a “big inspiration” for Nine Inch Nails: “Make you feel bad, the whole time.”
