Buy it... if you enjoy John Ottman's lyrical sense of style and personable, thematic development in his suspenseful underscores.

Avoid it... if you prefer your thriller scores by Ottman to be flighty and ambitious, with the whole orchestral ensemble participating in overt slashes and hits.

Ottman

Gothika: (John Ottman) With a production rushed at breakneck speed in an attempt to capture a Halloween audience, Gothika missed its mark and hit theatres at the height of the Christmas season. Call it a bad omen. Its plot is leagues away from having the holiday spirit, with a criminal psychologist (Halle Berry) accused of murdering her husband and driven nearly insane in her search for the truth. During her investigation, she fights the horrors of a dark prison and messages from ghosts that are giving her clues about their own murders (which eventually relate as well to her own predicament). Despite some hefty star power (including Robert Downey, Jr. and Penelope Cruz in supporting roles), the film was introduced to composer John Ottman from the start as a "low budget" horror project. While Ottman was not responsible for the film's late arrival, the same process that caused the film's delays also led the composer on his own journey of frustration and extremely rushed artistry. Ottman was, of course, no stranger to the horror genre; he seems to excel with a sense of morbid pleasure when offered horror films to score, and he even directed, edited, and scored his own entry, Urban Legends: Final Cut, in 2000. For Gothika, Ottman would need to lend an organic sound to the psychological thriller, another task with which the composer was familiar. After presenting demo material for 15 minutes of the film in just two days (be sure to read the humorous account of this event on Ottman's official site, including his internal response to the 2-day demo process: "Impossible! It will be shit!"), Ottman impressed the director and producer of the film with his living, breathing style of orchestral writing. In the latter stages of production, his score would be expanded to fit into nearly every dark corner of the film's running time (a circumstance that the composer had just dealt with in the post-production process of Trapped), and the music had to be frantically placed into the film's scenes before running the finished product (in pieces) past the studio for approval. A notable exception is the placement of two songs (not presented on the score album) over the end credits. As he had proven in the past, however, Ottman is also no stranger to the art of quick-scoring, and his output for Gothika, while not outstanding, is impressive under the circumstances.

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First and foremost, it's important to mention that Ottman's typical, lyrical style of providing a gothic atmosphere for his music is alive and well in Gothika. He occasionally loses that creative touch in the horror genre, as had happened with Trapped. But his knack for solemn themes, choral majesty, and unusual percussion comes into full play here, making Gothika a score that transcends the normal boundaries of 'fright and flight' thriller scores. The orchestral ensemble is not as pounding and relentless in its bold brass hits as, for instance, you would hear in his other (or Chris Young or Graeme Revell's) slasher works. One notable moment of shrill brass wailing comes in "Revelation." Restraining the score to the less obvious, psychological realm, however, Ottman provides personal themes for three elements in the film and relies on scratching, tearing, and quivering sound effects with the ensemble for most of the traditionally scary accents. His piano and string theme for the primary character, Miranda, is soft and personable, highlighted by a three-note woodwind/choral motif over the top of concluding chords in each phrase of the theme. This simple touch proves to be the highlight of the score, because while Ottman would incorporate the full Miranda theme into a few other places throughout the film, the three-note motif, embodying the same compassionate appeal as the whole theme, is worked into many more cues throughout the effort. The motif serves as a reminder of the character's goodness and sustains hope in an otherwise troubled underscore. The theme for the little girl's ghost is mixed with the sound effects of disjointed whispering sounds. An oppressive theme for the prison itself is performed by cello and choir, and its empathic connection with the audience is established in "One of Us" and "You're Next." The latter cue serves as a suite, to some extent, of the film's thematic ideas, and the score finishes with a slightly optimistic rendition of Miranda's theme. For the sake of suspense, the cue "Final Escape" makes excellent use of timpani and an array of clicking percussion, satisfying Ottman collectors who prefer his keen sense of integrating an entire ensemble into each work. Overall, there is at least ten minutes of very enjoyable, thematic development in Gothika, and while the suspenseful material in between these moments is nothing spectacular, Ottman collectors should not hesitate to investigate this lyrical journey in the darkness. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.03 (in 17,523 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.