Buy it... if you don't mind typical, shreeking explosions of terror in an otherwise very mellow and underwhelming score.
Avoid it... if you consider most generic and mundane suspense scores to be lifeless and uninspiring.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Young
Hider in the House: (Christopher Young) Had this film
been made ten years later, it may very well have been a late-night cable
television affair. With a cast boasting two regularly supporting stars,
Hider in the House is an urban horror/thriller with a predictable
plot. A man abused as a child (Gary Busey) has been released from twenty
years of institutionalized care after killing his parents in a fire, and
decides to secretly build an apartment in the attic of a huge Colonial-style
home and hide there in solitude. A family moves into the house, not knowing
of the secret occupant in the attic, and slowly the man leaves hints of his
existence and saves the family from accidents. After exposing the father of
the family as an adulterer, the man befriends and eventually terrorizes the
mother of the family (Mimi Rogers). It's a psycho-in-the-attic kind of tale,
and without anything particularly new or refreshing about the angle on the
story, the film's popularity sank immediately upon release. Director Matthew
Patrick had been a childhood classmate of composer Christopher Young in
Massachusetts, and with Young already establishing himself (by 1990) as the
master of the horror genre of film music, Patrick called upon Young for a
collaboration on Hider in the House. It was a project right up the
alley of Young, who had not only scored big name horror scores with large,
crashing ensembles, but had extended himself into the realm of quiet
suspense as well. This score in particular would be very similar in plot
scenario and musical requirements to Unlawful Entry, a like-minded
film of slightly better success that was scored with minimal intrusion by
James Horner. The approaches by Young and Horner towards these films are
arguably appropriate, but in their long list of scores released on album,
neither one is particularly interesting. Both, as a matter of fact, would be
released by Intrada Records and eventually "deleted" by the label at an
incredible 99 cents per copy in the late 1990's.
Young has stated that the personality of the score for
Hider in the House mirrors the emotional state of the primary
character played by Busey. The emotionally underdeveloped persona of that
character is innocent and subdued, normally stalking and observing the
situation. But, of course, that character is also prone to explosions of
anger, and Young's score therefore offers two or three highly typical,
shreeking explosions of terror whenever the character strikes with anger.
The rest of Hider in the House is a very mellow and underwhelming
during its playing time. The two themes of the film --one for family
innocence and the other serving as an echo of the primary character's
troubled childhood-- are transparent, though simple in their expression. The
music box approach for the family is not presented with great consistency,
causing it to meander aimlessly in the background of several cues. The
childhood theme is presented in the form of a boy's choir that performs a
rhythmic four-note theme to represent the hiding psycho. The score and film
open with this seemingly religious, innocent choral passage, and end with it
as well. Its performances remain consistently optimistic and pure, with the
low rumbling of the orchestra surrounding and overwhelming the theme at the
start (as to introduce the premise of the film). The mass of the underscore
is as basic as it gets, with all of the instruments of the orchestra playing
in their lower-most ranges to create a wall of sound that is used to
unsettle the listener. On album, this continuous sound effect is broken only
by the shattering blasts of quick horror, as well as the two choral
passages. Even the choir can't save this score from the pit of despair,
however, and the score is ultimately a lifeless, uninspiring effort. For a
simple mood, Hider in the House may suffice, but musically speaking,
it lacks enough of an identity to justify a solo listen. It did mark one of
the first collaborations between Young and Doug Fake of Intrada Records,
leading to the generous release of many Young scores by Intrada in the ten
years to follow. *
