The Newton Brothers: Playing With Shades of Darkness

June 13, 2025

Arielle Paul

 
Contrary to their sobriquet, the Newton Brothers are not related. John Andrew Grush and Taylor Newton Stewart chose the name in honor of Sir Isaac Newton and their mutual admiration for the mathematics of music. “We’re musical brothers, like the Dust Brothers and Chemical Brothers,” said Stewart. Yet the concept of chosen family runs deep for the duo, exemplified in their decade-long collaboration with writer-director Mike Flanagan, with whom they’ve scored eleven projects. 

Though the Newton Brothers’ body of work spans almost three decades, with numerous directors and various genres, their mastery of horror and collaboration with Flanagan has shaped their career, putting them on the map as the maestros of menace. But to simply coin them as horror composers seems cursory and limiting for the complexity of their scores, especially those with Flanagan, which, like the narratives of these projects themselves, play with many different gradients and shades of darkness that seep into the realm of depth and drama.

“If you view life in a very dark way, that’s what it’ll be for you. But if you perceive it with the hope that things could be better, or maybe your experiences can teach you things, you can use this to change your life”

Their latest Flanagan project, The Life of Chuck, based on the Stephen King novella of the same title, is “really a drama wrapped in horror,” said Stewart. With a release set for May this year, the film and its score have pushed Flanagan and the Newton Brothers into new, genre-bending territory. “The music reflects sort of the simplicity that I think we need when we’re going through things in life that are challenging,” said Grush, “the film is a culmination of all of those things that Mike has done so well in his career. It all comes together in a very unexpected way.” 

The Life of Chuck, photo courtesy of NEON.

 
Pushing musical boundaries in this way has taken practice and trust garnered over many years in creative partnership with Flanagan, who is widely known for working with much of the same cast and crew from project to project. This type of bond allows for sensitivity and empathy definitive of a close family, holding space for creative experimentation and things being a work in progress. “I think that sensitivity in Flanagan is really refreshing and inspiring because it allows for a vulnerability in everything he’s working on and then enables us to feel that same vulnerability to try ideas or open up. It feels like a safe place,” said Grush. 

The ability to communicate musically with Flanagan, who is a skilled pianist, has made this kind of fluid and experimental collaboration all the more fruitful. Building upon their shared musical lexicon from one project to the next has inspired Grush and Stewart to continually challenge themselves. “Each project has such a unique tone that it really forces Taylor and I to get out of our heads and get out of things that we’ve done in the past, whether it’s for Mike or for something else, and to really try to figure out what that sound is,” Grush said. 

Within this gradient of the Flanagan horror universe is a wide range of tones and themes, each film and series a world unto itself, though definitively his brand of taste and style that spills into the music. “Essentially minimalism,” said Stewart, especially in terms of music. “Mike’s a minimalist until it’s time not to be. Four chords could go a long way, but it’s very specific in how they make you feel, and then it could be a wall of just chaos that’s enormous,” he said.

Much of this depends on what’s happening on the screen and the nature of the project as a whole. For the 2023 miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher, for example, which is roughly based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and follows the demise of the Usher dynasty as the family’s dark past comes back to haunt them, the aesthetics and music stylistically nod to the gothic elements of the source material. Counter melodies will bounce back and forth, mirroring the grandiose, colorful and complex family at the show’s narrative core, often layered over dialogue.

“In a lot of the scenes, the score is just hammering away underneath to kind of pull you through the story and the emotion of what characters are feeling because there’s so much to Usher happening under the surface,” said Grush. 

Several scenes with actor Michael Trucco, who plays the antagonistic and wonderfully boisterous Rufus Griswold, were scored without a click track “because he was so dynamic,” said Grush. During a five-minute monologue in episode three, “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” the cue “I am the Candy Man” plays like a ballet based on Trucco’s dialogue, the soloed piano following the melodic cadence of his every word. 

In other cues, like “At Last,” which plays during the first three and a half minutes of the show’s pilot, the fullness of the orchestra takes form, embellishing the opening with dramatic strings that soar and punctuate the intensity on screen, setting the stage for the foreboding narrative and musical tone. “But then, if we would have done that in something like that in The Haunting of Hill House, it probably wouldn’t have worked,” said Stewart. 

Unlike the score for The Fall of the House of Usher, whose bold presence often acts like another character in a scene or takes on a narrative voice, the score for the 2018 miniseries The Haunting of Hill House adopts a more minimalist approach, acting as a shadow in the scene, or, even a ghost. During the episode “Two Storms,” the cue “Come Home” begins with a singular piano note, with an uncomfortably long pause before the following note. Flanagan wanted a deliberately drawn-out score for the tense, emotional scene between the fractured Crain family, who are brought together when one of the siblings dies.

The Fall of the House of Usher. (L to R) Mary McDonnell as Madeline Usher, Bruce Greenwood as Roderick Usher, Ruth Codd as Juno Usher in episode 105 of The Fall of the House of Usher. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2023

 
“If you’re sitting there playing it, it feels like forever, and listening to it just as a piece of music also takes a long time. But if you’re watching it within the scene, it’s exactly what it needs because the music needs to be out of the way while carrying you along on the emotional journey,” Grush said.

At its essence, The Haunting of Hill House, like many of Flanagan’s works, is a story about family and generational trauma. Ghosts extend beyond a mechanism of fright to represent a family’s unresolved past and emotional inheritance. As such, time jumps are a common thread in the Flanagan universe, requiring the music to act as a unifying force to tie it all together with “an intention of timelessness in many of the scores,” said Grush. In some instances, these timeless musical themes extend from one series to the next, such as The Haunting of Hill House and the 2020 miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor. 

“It’s very, very deliberate,” said Stewart. “We discussed the application of that with Mike and brought in some new themes and pieces of music meant for specific characters or things in Bly Manor, but for the most part, it’s a continuation of the themes in The Haunting of Hill House and how it relates to this new story.”

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR (L to R) ROBY ATTAL as EDMUND and VICTORIA PEDRETTI as DANI in episode 104 of THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR Cr. EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIX © 2020

 
On the production side of both these scores, Grush and Stewart used a specific reverb on all the strings and the piano tails to create “a sense of mist” in the music, “so when you hit a note, it just goes forever,” said Stewart. Musically echoing the dreary, misty and damp settings in both series creates continuity between the two worlds while enhancing the sensory experience and mood for the audience both sonically and visually, like an ever-present ghost. In contrast, the music in The Fall of the House of Usher was recorded with close miking, capturing the score’s clear and direct sound. 

Venturing further into new terrains of depth and darkness, The Newton Brothers’ score for the 2021 miniseries Midnight Mass explores the world of religious music, reimagining age-old hymns for this eerie tale of an isolated island town overcome by an evil presence. Filmed during the pandemic, much of the communication and early drafts of the score were handled by Grush and Stewart remotely. “When mocking up a hymn, it’s hard to just do a solo vocal and say, this is how it’ll go,” said Grush. “So we would stack our voices and do all of the parts and harmonies and send them to Mike, which worked really well. We just kind of kept doing that.” The final vocals on the soundtrack are a combination of Grush, Stewart and hired singers, which felt fitting to Grush, who went to Catholic school from kindergarten through the end of undergrad and knew all the hymns by heart. 

While religion is a key theme in the show, the horror elements left Grush wondering how the hymns would be received by religious communities, including his own family, many of whom are deeply Catholic. “It went over very well, even though the story is intense. The music needed to be sincere within the narrative, not a vampire version of the hymn ‘Were You There,’” said Grush. The somber, moving and intimate vocals, lauded by the religious music community, helped enhance the thematic conversation the series raises around faith. 

However, there’s a dichotomy with the instrumental part of the score, which offers a very different perspective: how the characters on the island feel – lonely, despondent, scared. The score’s eeriness simultaneously reflects these raw emotions and delivers the horror flare expected by die-hard Flanagan fans, “staying out of the way while letting you know that something is there,” said Grush. While the hymns may offer a didactic voice, the instrumental score does not instruct but remains subtly subjective. 

Neither Flanagan nor the Newton Brothers deliver prescriptive horror, yet some projects, like Doctor Sleep, lean more heavily into the genre. A sequel to The Shining, the 2019 film follows a now-adult Dan Torrance (Jack Torrance’s son) as he protects a young girl also possessing the “shining” and confronts the Overlook Hotel once again. “It was obviously exhilarating. We’re both huge fans of The Shining, and it’s still one of the most incredible projects we’ve ever worked on,” said Stewart. Their approach to the writing began with analyzing the original score, which they discovered was mainly comprised of  “a lot of needle-drops of classical composers overlapping and randomly stacked on top of each other,” Stewart said. The score itself was only used in a few selective places, while this mishmashed array of compositions created a dissonant and unsettling effect. “Rewatching it, I thought, oh wow, this is why I’m feeling so scared,” said Grush. 

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya, Igby Rigney as Kevin, Adia as Cheri, Aya Furukawa as Natsuki, Annarah Cymone as Sandra in episode 105 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

How to intentionally replicate this level of chaos without haphazardly making noise became both the goal and challenge. Their initial approach was too melodic, after which a conscious decision was made with Flanagan to avoid melody as much as possible, except for the cue “The Overlook,” paying homage to the original film and score, and focus instead on how to use noise thematically and create a signature sound. 

“That led us to these bizarre instruments that we recorded up in San Francisco and different techniques that were very unconventional. Some of it was a disaster, and some of it was successful,” said Stewart. They worked with composer Paul Dresher, who builds and performs these unique instruments, including the Hurdy Grande featured in Doctor Sleep. “It’s bananas. It sounds like a monster is eating you,” said Grush. They also recorded a wind harp during an extreme weather event, seven minutes of which is played during an iconic bar scene in the film without any edits. 

With the release of The Life of Chuck, the Newton Brothers unveil a “fully different instrumental palette, a mix of organic instruments, and straight-up analog synthesizers,” said Grush. But beyond this, a new shade in their horror oeuvre has emerged: the expression of hope derived in the face of darkness. 

“If you view life in a very dark way, that’s what it’ll be for you. But if you perceive it with the hope that things could be better, or maybe your experiences can teach you things, you can use this to change your life. Depending on the project, the character might perceive this. But I think in some cases, like The Life of Chuck, the score dictates a little bit of which direction this will go,” said Stewart.