"It's been a big inspiration for what I try to do with Nine Inch Nails. Make you feel bad. The whole time." Trent Reznor picks his favourite films of all time

Trent Reznor
(Image credit: Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images)

Nine Inch Nails duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are now among the most respected, and most acclaimed, film soundtrack composers of the modern era, having won two Oscars (Best Original Score for 2010's The Social Network and 2020's Soul), in addition to a host of Baftas, Grammys, Golden Globe Awards and Emmy Awards for their impressive catalogue.

The pair's most recent collaboration is the score for A24's Queer, Italian film-maker Luca Guadagnino's romantic period drama set in 1950s Mexico City, in which Daniel Craig's character William Lee becomes infatuated with discharged US Navy serviceman Eugene Allerton, played by Drew Starkey.

At the film's premiere at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on November 13, the pair were asked by Letterboxd to name their four favourite films of all time. Reznor nominated two undeniable classics - Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver and David Lynch's gloriously dark 1986 film Blue Velvet - plus a more recent selection, French director/screenwriter Julia Ducournau's 2021 body horror Titane.

For his fourth pick, Reznor plumped for Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg's typically unsettling psychological thriller Dead Ringers, released in 1988.

Expanding upon his choice of Dead Ringers, Nine Inch Nails' mainman saluted, "The incredible sense of dread from the first frame to the end, you're not sure what's going to happen, but it's going to be bad. Love it. It's been a big inspiration for what I try to do with Nine Inch Nails. Make you feel bad. The whole time."

Atticus Ross also selected Taxi Driver and Blue Velvet among his choices, plus '80s film studies student favourite Betty Blue - the intense French erotic drama which launched tens of thousands of Béatrice Dalle posters - and 1984 action comedy Beverly Hills Cop, a curveball choice if ever there was one, and the film which made Eddie Murphy a superstar.

Reznor and Ross, as Nine Inch Nails, are currently working on the score for TRON: Ares, the third instalment of the sci-fi film series, set for release in October 2025.

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.