Internal relationships within the soundtrack significantly contribute towards the communication and interpretation of storytelling within contemporary mainstream horror cinema.

Shifting emphasis away from categorical and typological models of film music and sound, the thesis adopts a functional and phenomenologically oriented approach to the integrated soundtrack. It examines how perceived interconnectedness within the soundtrack carries narrative meaning, and how such meaning may be experienced and interpreted, as inferred through analytical listening. 

While the integrated soundtrack has been widely discussed, Interconnectedness itself remains under-theorised as a perceptual and analytical concept. This thesis addresses that gap by developing a conceptual framework grounded in an ontology of interconnectedness. The framework categorises the types of relationships operating within the soundtrack and theorises how they are perceived and how they mediate structural, semantic, expressive, and explicative dimensions of narrative meaning in contemporary mainstream horror cinema.