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| Bates |
Dawn of the Dead: (Tyler Bates) The immense
popularity of George A. Romero's 1968 horror flick
Night of the
Living Dead led to decades of sequels and spin-offs, and one such
related sideshow is the 2004 re-envisioning of Romero's second film in
the series,
Dawn of the Dead. As the directorial debut of Zack
Snyder, the zombie movie sought to adapt concepts from the 1978
inspiration for a new societal perspective in the 21st Century, and
Romero ironically followed suit with several of his own sequels to the
original concept in subsequent years. As a standalone venture, 2004's
Dawn of the Dead was met with considerable critical praise and
box office success despite abandoning some of the most intriguing social
commentary about consumerism in the 1978 movie. Once again, a random
group of flawed people is forced by a zombie apocalypse to barricade
themselves in a suburban mall, and, after losing some of their ranks and
killing the reanimated versions of their group, they ultimately must
find a way to flee to a better haven. The story does fall into some of
the traps of the contemporary horror genre, characters making stupid
decisions for the sake of yielding better victims. The gore remains an
attraction, of course. If anything, the movie proved that the public's
lust for zombie flicks remained sturdy. The project was the first horror
assignment for composer Tyler Bates, who was originally doubted by the
studio but who was championed by Snyder. The two thus began a fruitful
collaboration over many years, and some viewers and listeners consider
Dawn of the Dead the best of their work together in retrospect.
Bates' immediate concern with the concept was the strategic debate about
whether he could repackage anything significant from Goblin's well known
1978 score. While the composer felt the same affection as many fans for
the distinctive sound and main theme of the Italian progressive rock
band's music for the movie, Bates eventually decided to blaze a new
path.
The direction Bates opted to explore for
Dawn of the
Dead produced a far more conventional orchestral and electronic
horror score that blended in with countless others of similar builds and
attitudes in its era. For a composer not yet established and facing
studio skepticism, he understandably took the safest route and executed
its norms well enough to acquit himself. While Bates succeeding in
providing
Dawn of the Dead with adequate music to achieve his
purpose, though, his work is significantly less memorable as a result.
Not surprisingly, Bates' approach to
Dawn of the Dead is an
extended exercise in nasty-minded dissonance, the narrative only
throwing minimal tonalities of ease in a handful of cues but never truly
relenting. The full orchestra is utilized as a tool of atmospheric
despair, the difference between synthetic manipulation and organic
unpleasantries neither always important nor discernable. Some of Bates'
industrial groaning effects are totally unlistenable ("You Wanna Kill My
Family"), and sound effects are at times totally bizarre, such as the
machine whirring in "Fucking Figures." You'll find both in typical
crescendo formations repeatedly. Special accents often get lost in the
mix or overplay their hand; a female voice is placed too distantly to be
impactful while the unusual drum kit coolness in "Sailing the Sea of
Zombies" is distracting. The oppression remains consistent throughout,
the most intriguing deviation coming in "Hangman's Song," a source vocal
arranged by Bates for an otherwise a grungy rock piece. The score
generally gets more interesting as it reaches its climax, with more
orchestral activity apparent, but even there it's a depressing slog.
Motifs in the score are mostly confined to a primary idea for the
protagonists' predicament and a couple of fleeting secondary tools. The
main theme is rather elusive, debuting at 0:26 into "Gunman" on large
brass and exuded as a fragment on that brass late in "We're Going to the
Mall." A fuller presentation awaits after a performance at 0:28 into
"America Always Sorts its Shit Out" on solo oboe over a string wash and
synthetic atmosphere.
The main theme of
Dawn of the Dead is flattened
into a more aggressive action variant at 0:21 into "Truck Over Zombies,"
receives a little more fluid version that quietly meanders on piano at
the start of "Blood Bath City," and gains momentum in the second minute
of "It's Only a Matter of Time," where the idea guides the low-key panic
for the rest of the cue in a more tonal mode than most of the score. The
main theme helps drive the middle of "That Dog's Just Fucked Up" over
the descending zombie pitch motif while faint hints on music box early
in "Luda's Transformation" give way to expectedly disturbing dissonance.
It is reinforced on strings and oboe at the outset of "We Have to do
Something Now," gaining a sense of gravity but later degenerating into
generic action pulses with the theme's fragments. The strongest
symphonic presence for the idea follows as it informs the frantic,
mostly accessible action early in "Subterranean Sewer Attack." It
presents some muted resolution from the orchestra throughout "Enjoy the
Sunrise" with some half-hearted depth of conclusion in the last 30
seconds, but even here it remains vaguely disconnected via its
intentionally ambiguous string sustains. The zombies, meanwhile, receive
a mundane descending pitch effect in the bass akin to Brad Fiedel's
handling of a similarly persistent villain in
Terminator 2: Judgment
Day, and this tone can be applied regularly as almost a stinger when
reanimated corpses inconveniently cause problems. A quirky subtheme also
descends on piano and synths with a hint of choral element in "How Will
Your God Judge You." Otherwise, the score for
Dawn of the Dead is
a brutal listening experience with little hope at the end of the tunnel.
It took many years for the score to finally debut on album, and the
humorous track titles on that hour-long test of your patience do not
disappoint. That said, there is a very narrow audience for this score
apart from the movie, as Bates only barely manages to achieve some
semblance of narrative flow and the demeanor is downright nasty and
cacophonous for most of the score's running time. Mean-spirited
environments in horror scores rarely get bleaker than this.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Tyler Bates reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.11
(in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.47
(in 4,717 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a note from the director about the composer and score.
