But now an artistic group from Austin, Texas, called Silents Synced and its director Josh Frank are offering a new approach to silent cinema: showing classics to music by established stars. This one, Radiohead X Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror puts Murnau's 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu with Radiohead's Kid A from 2000 and Amnesiac from 2001. But I just couldn't make friends with this fundamentally wrong-headed idea.
One technique powerfully employed in the film has the incongruous name of "Mickey Mousing." Named after the manner in which classic cartoons were scored in tight synchrony with the movements of their characters, it had fallen into disuse by the nineteen-seventies, when a subtler cinematic style prevailed.
"Cristobal Tapia de Veer's score in Smile contrasts disorienting soundscapes with moments of intense musicality, effectively enhancing the film's horror elements through innovative compositions."