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•	2019 Album

•	2017 Album

•	2003 Album

The subtleties of solo instrumentation are the key to Dreamcatcher's success, and to that end, Howard achieves a level of paranoia and alienation in his music that enthusiasts of his other horror endeavors will be able to appreciate. Interestingly, given the Native American history of the dreamcatcher as a symbol, as well as inspiration for the art for the film, there is no corresponding ethnicity to this score. (The story is set in King's favorite location of Maine.) In fact, the main detriment of Howard's approach to Dreamcatcher is the extremely generic tone of its character when compared to his other scores in the genre. The majority of the music for Dreamcatcher is tense, riveting ambience, punctuated by occasional, typical orchestral hits and sharp blasts. Howard manages to do this without allowing his work to fit snugly into a horror score stereotype by incorporating a wide range of electronic rhythms and somewhat interesting sounds that enforce the thrill of the moment with a touch of the supernatural. Especially evident in the marginal primary keyboarded theme for the picture, these electronics serve to represent the young, contemporary men in the tale, the military involvement, and, of course, the spine-tingling environment that results when there isn't another sound in the film. These electronic elements may not have pizzazz, nor will they alone float the score. Only Howard's watertight tension, always prevalent in the orchestra (and usually the strings), causes the electronic loops to gain their edge. Several extremely difficult crescendos of dissonance are employed throughout the work to accomplish the task of fright, and the lack of accessible tonality in the vast majority of less extroverted cues defines the score as a troubled one. The score is short on thematic resonance, the aforementioned, keyboarded motif only substantively heard in the first two cues (chronologically), in "Boys Find Josie," "It's Over," and closing out the "End Credits." It's a nicely alluring idea but nothing to sustain the entire score. Howard shies away from the use of any other theme, instead opting for a two-note motif to represent the grander, fully orchestral moments of realization in the film. In the cues "The Weasel," "The Debate," and "Curtis and Own Battle," this motif is performed in full.

There are a handful of action and fantasy cues in Dreamcatcher, but they are not as impressively rendered as one would hope. Only the discovery cue "Jonesy and Gray Debate" contains a magnificent moment of awe existing at the same level as in Howard's majestic Atlantis: The Lost Empire and several subsequent, fantasy-oriented projects. In "Mr. Gray Go Away," a less tonally pleasing burst from the orchestra is tainted by dissonant brass effects. The straight action portions, leading up to the climactic "Duddits and Mr. Gray," are typically brief and rely upon pounding percussion and brass hits for their common thrills. Fans of the composer will find merit in these passages, but, in the end, Dreamcatcher is an underwhelming experience. It best represents the sound design ambience of a subdued suspense and horror score, potentially causing its listening experience on album to be difficult for the light-hearted. The original 2003 product was long ridiculed because it was missing some of the score's obvious highlights, and this situation came about because Varèse Sarabande didn't have access to major cues from the latter half of the film when condensing the 96-minute recording down to 40 minutes for the desired release date. Themselves long bothered by the situation, the label finally rectified the Dreamcatcher presentation in 2017 when the score was one of four released together in "The Stephen King Collection," a $90 set of 1,500 copies that also contained Firestarter, The Stand, and TV's The Shining. Spread over two CDs in that set, the Dreamcatcher portion finally supplies the additional action cues demanded by fans, though they are not really barn burners in quality. It also features the "End Credits" cue with Howard's obnoxiously heavy but still interesting electronica rhythms at the outset. Varèse offered the same contents on a standalone 2-CD set of 1,000 copies in 2019. While a marginally effective score, Howard's work transfers onto any album much like others in its genre have done before; if you can appreciate the delicate care taken in the use of the ambient electronics and tolerate the usual orchestral thrashing during ten minutes of the score, then Dreamcatcher may be a target of interest. For others, this score is a clear reminder that effective and interesting horror scores don't typically translate into readily engaging listening experiences out of context.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4 (in 70 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 86,418 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.