Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you appreciate a thriller score that haunts with its beauty and intrigues with its strongly rooted, usually harmonic orchestral and electronic suspense. Avoid it... if you would rather hear your heartbreaking orchestral themes without the striking electronic sound effects that litter the middle portions of this particular score. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Butterfly Effect: (Michael Suby) If the conundrums of temporal mechanics and a time paradox or two typically drive you nuts, then watch out for this one. The psychological thriller The Butterfly Effect was created by the same people who brought Final Destination 2 to the screen, and they seemed to enjoy twisting reality and parallel timelines in bizarre, psychological ways. To some degree, The Butterfly Effect is a another variation on the reality-twisting tales of teen love gone awry, and perhaps you have to scratch your head and wonder just how many times films like this will continue to earn audience interest. Basically, a psychologically gifted, but troubled young man discovers that he can travel back in time and exist with his current mind in his earlier body and, therefore, alter prior events of his life into his favor; but those temporal mechanics come back to haunt him as his changes don't necessarily change the future for the better (didn't this kid ever watch "Star Trek: Voyager"?). The filmmakers recognized that this particular project would, like the events in the film, move in unpredictable ways, and they went in search of a composer who could understand their warped sense of thinking and adapt accordingly. Their early choice was Michael Suby, a young composer fresh out of music school who had written for various unimpressive projects through that time. Despite knowing Suby personally, the producers didn't present his unknown name to the studio originally, but in a stroke of luck, the studio had heard a demo recording from Suby specifically for The Butterfly Effect and he was hired to the delight of everyone on the project. The task of scoring the film was troublesome because of the filmmakers' notions that instrumentation should change in each parallel reality through which the main character in the film travels. Themes and instrumentation established at the start wouldn't necessarily exist later in the film because that original timeline was wiped out. In the end, however, Suby ultimately created a score that was far less twisted than that original idea had been. Much of the varying personality of the music in the film rested on the shoulders of the numerous song placements that forced the score into a smaller role. The score did require several rewrites in post-production, but the primary theme that Suby had written in the aforementioned demo did eventually evolve into the score's identity and highlight. His work for The Butterfly Effect doesn't really vary from time shift to time shift as much as it could have, with a consistent blend of orchestral and electronic music remaining steady in quality, general harmony, and substance from start to end. The score varies from somewhat aimless, electronically-enhanced dissonance in its moody portions to brilliant outbursts of fully orchestral and choral melody. For a psychological horror score, it achieves exactly what anyone could possibly want: thematic beauty for its heart and a maintained level of interesting texture for its filler cues. The recording of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra is, as always, stellar in its crystal clear, superb sound quality, and when combined with Suby's ability to provide intriguing orchestral ideas in even the most tense of moments, the score remains interesting at all times. A good example of this fresh use of orchestral blending occurs in "Send You a Postcard," in which a propulsive, chopping string rhythm of determination is accompanied by an intentionally off-pitch whining of even higher strings. A sound effect that resembles an electronically echoed barking dog is introduced in "Lenny's Explosive Flash" and carries forward into several of the horror and action cues. The orchestral foundation is stronger than the electronics, which twice in the score produce a more hip, contemporary rhythm to accompany a "cooler" persona on screen. A piano is utilized to produce the safe, suburban environment of family, and it is no coincidence that the piano's innocence fades as the score progresses. The highlights of the score are the orchestral statements of theme, such as the simple, chord-alternating Kayleigh theme heard lovingly in "Kayleigh Loves Lenny" and heartbreakingly in "Kayleigh's Funeral." Statements of the primary theme in the first and final cues are superb, with a solo woodwind and boy soprano adding to the mystery and solitude of the score. The rich orchestral depth of The Butterfly Effect makes it a rare thriller that is easy to enjoy on album, and a nicely rounded 44 minutes of only Suby's material is provided on La-La Land Records' product. It was an impressive debut for the composer into the mainstream of big screen cinema that unfortunate did not yield similar success thereafter. **** Track Listings:
Total Time: 43:50
All artwork and sound clips from The Butterfly Effect are Copyright © 2004, La-La Land Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/17/04, updated 4/8/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2004-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
