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Review of Disturbing Behavior (Mark Snow)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you have witnessed the film and have appreciated
the music, and/or you are an absolute die-hard fan of the more mundane
underscores from The X-Files.
Avoid it... if you value any resemblance of intelligent design, creative spark, or thoughtful inventiveness in your low-budget scores.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Disturbing Behavior: (Mark Snow) Unless you're a
fan of actress Katie Holmes, for whom this would be her transition from
television to the big screen, Disturbing Behavior offers
absolutely nothing for the greater good. A horror/thriller story along
the lines of Village of the Damned, director David Nutter's cheap
scare tactics had trouble attracting even the teenage crowd, with a plot
so convoluted and nonsensical that the film attempted to rely on
non-existent visual stimulation to keep people entertained. The premise
of the story is so ridiculous and malformed that it's hard to give any
kind of synopsis, other than that a teenage society is divided between
the group of "good" kids and the group of "bad" kids, and when a
newcomer to town decides to join the "bad" group, a nonstop chase of
fear and revenge ensues. Make sense to you? There's really no point to
any of the action, and Disturbing Behavior strings you along from
scare to scare without any intention of truly developing a personality
or a purpose. The director was among the producers of the television hit
The X-Files, and it's no surprise, therefore, that veteran alien
conspiracy composer Mark Snow was hired to score Disturbing
Behavior. Given that the motion picture debut of The X-Files
would hit the theatres later in the year, expectations were high for
Snow. Unfortunately, Disturbing Behavior swept Snow down into the
same pool of muck that defined every other aspect of the film, and, as
we all know, the motion picture score for The X-Files wasn't
necessarily that impressive either. As for Disturbing Behavior,
the purely synthetic score would largely be the performance of Snow
himself, producing sounds that The X-Files fans will identify
from the more drab, suspenseful moments of the show's run. Unfortunately
for Snow, Disturbing Behavior sounds like a "worst of The
X-Files" compilation, extending to become some of the most boring
and lifeless music put onto a score album in quite some time.
On a basic level, Snow was trying to make a score that did several things: service the suspense, bring coolness to the teenage crowd, and save some money in doing so. The first goal is satisfied to the degree that any very basic score can appeal to the primordial emotions of the listener, no matter how poorly developed it is. The second goal is never achieved, with the employment of an electric guitar and a few strutting rhythms in the latter half of the score falling well short of any sex appeal. And as for saving money for the production, Snow may have done just that. But the score is so cheaply rendered that it begs for classification in the B-rated genre. Everything about Snow's music here sounds cheap, from the thematic ideas through the horror slashes and stabs at cool anthem presented in "Evil Chairs." The title theme is embodied by echoing, dissonant synthetic orchestra hits, bouncing between left and right channels while the title theme very slowly extends itself in the background using keyboarded whole notes (Cast Away-style). While a sense of resolution eventually concludes the theme when the synthetic, echoing hits match the harmony of the keyboard in the final notes, the rendering of the theme (even with treble-region tingling effects) is too sparse to enjoy. The action sequences in Disturbing Behavior are a far less dense version of Brad Fiedel's Terminator music, with a palette of sounds so limited that the inclusion of them all at once exposes a failed attempt to bring effectiveness to the cue through volume. A few moments of thematic development in a traditional sense are explored in "Dead Neck/Rowboat" and during "Safe Ferry/Finale," but even these are overwhelmed by the bleak atmosphere constantly maintained by Snow's droning bass-region electronics. Tired synth loops and drum pads never mature past their own repetitious performances, and the lack of any truly enjoyable harmony in the score can't even point it in the direction of the new age genre. The most interesting aspect of the album is the inclusion of John Beal's trailer music for the film, which is still rather cheaply rendered on synthesizer, but at least has a dynamic range of sound that seems like a godsend after 40 minutes of Snow's mundane, non-descript meanderings. *
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 42:40
* Composed, Conducted, and Produced by John Beal
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a short bio of Snow's career, as well as the following
comments from director David Nutter about Snow's score:
My own career began in music with dreams of doing what Mark does to perfection. At least now I can say that, after working with Mark Snow, that dream has come true at last."
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Disturbing Behavior are Copyright © 1999, Sonic Images Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/16/98 and last updated 1/14/07. |
