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Godsend: (Brian Tyler) What's worse: cloning your dead
child and eventually discovering that the child is a demon seed... or making
a really horrible movie about it? A universal pounding was delivered to
Godsend when it was released in theatres, not just from critics, but
from an audience seeking intelligent approaches at a viable social and
emotional issue. Attempting to merge the ideas of
A.I. and
The
Omen into one not-so-pretty picture,
Godsend tells the dubious
story of an average Northeastern couple whose eight-year-old is killed in a
freak accident and, without thinking much about the consequences, turn their
lives over to Robert DeNiro's Godsend Institute so that the child can be
cloned and grow up all over again. It's funny that anti-cloning groups have
protested the film, because its story predictably teaches us that the clone
will be extremely psychologically disturbed and do horrible things (in other
words: cloning = bad). The film can't seem to decide where to take its
religious implications (especially with the child being named 'Adam'), and
if you are unhappy about the ending, then rest assured that director Nick
Hamm (whose career does not yet include any significant hits) shot no less
than seven alternate endings in which one or two of the parents is killed by
the child in multiple ways, and there is even a total blood bath in which
everyone dies. Lovely.
Composer Brian Tyler is no stranger to either the horror
genre or the realm of substandard films. His mainstream career, in fact, got
started with both, and fans who discovered Tyler with his monumental
Children of Dune television score should be interested in learning
the scores that have led up
Godsend for Tyler in the same genre. If
Timeline from the previous year is any indication by itself, then
Tyler doesn't seem phased by the quality of the films on which he works;
even in
Godsend, you hear the same attention to detail and
complicated construction that makes his material interesting to his
listeners. A half a dozen names of composers --if not more-- could be
mentioned as usual suspects when it comes to scores for films like
Godsend, and most of them would probably produce drab, underdeveloped
underscore suitable for the quality of the film. While Tyler is melodically
restrained by the genre, he still delivers a harmonic, varied, and
interesting score. He accomplishes this through the constantly heightened
level activity of movement in nearly every cue. Instead of building tension
through disharmony in lengthy whole notes, Tyler builds suspense through the
quick procession of alternating notes, chords, and rhythms throughout
Godsend that keep it light on its feet while also utilizing enough
disharmony to suffice for the picture. By establishing a pseudo-religious,
angelic sound for the boy, and mutating that sound throughout the score,
Tyler is perhaps somewhat responsible for critics and viewers raising
unanswered questions about religion in the film; there are several lush and
tender thematic sequences with strings, piano, and young solo voice that add
the psychological dimension to the religious questions.
Don't be buying
Godsend if, however, you are seeking
lengthy passages of pleasantries from strings, piano, and voice, because the
score also includes its fair share of standard horror striking and crashing.
The blasting seems to be centered in the last several cues on the album
(which is not in film order, perhaps for this reason), and, for the most
part, this is stock horror material for the brass and percussion. There are
only so many ways you can rattle a cymbal up to a crescendo and give it a
good slap at the end. But if you are a fan of the emerging Tyler, then the
rhythmic portions of
Godsend will keep you listening. Established in
the opening titles, the pulsating rhythm in minor key, sometimes accented by
light electronic choral effects laid over the top in an alternating major
key, serves to represent the technological and biological aspects of the
story. The application of this rhythm in "To Godsend" is performed with the
sound of a beating heart (of sorts --perhaps intentional, perhaps not), and
Tyler manages to balance the hope of restoration with the ominous undertones
of evil in the multiple elements of this rhythm. Overall, the album for
Godsend may be a bit long (at 67 minutes), with roughly 20 minutes of
remarkable, suspenseful underscore surrounded by stock horror sounds and
repetition. An excellent suite of themes and motifs is coordinated for the
end titles. For a film this bad, Tyler's score may be the only godsend to be
found, and only the lack of a better album arrangement restrains it from a
fourth star.
***
| Bias Check: | For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.3 (in 11 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 8,678 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
