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Review of Dawn of the Dead (2004) (Tyler Bates)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you require brutally nasty and cacophonous dissonance
to disturb your family, friends, and therapist.
Avoid it... if you value experimentation and distinctive character in your horror scores, Tyler Bates applying rather conservative industrial techniques as he tested the waters in this genre.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 64:35
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a note from the director about the composer and score.
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