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Review of Hide and Seek (John Ottman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're a sucker for John Ottman's addictively lyrical
themes and their quietly intelligent development through clever orchestral
and vocal applications.
Avoid it... if three or four performances of a tense, deceptively innocent child's lullaby can't compensate for half an hour of average, stock horror procedures in the interior of the score.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Hide and Seek: (John Ottman) A John Polson film
based upon an Ari Schlossberg screenplay, Hide and Seek was both a
critical and popular failure (despite somehow managing to haul in
impressive returns), released in 2005 just after the start of the year,
such timing never a good sign of confidence from a studio for any horror
production. In its story, Robert De Niro plays a psychiatrist and child
star Dakota Fanning is his pre-adolescent daughter. The mother commits
suicide in their apartment and the father does what nobody in his right
mind should do: move the two out to a big old deserted mansion where the
neighbors are a bit weird and the local sheriff has the keys to
everyone's door. The girl begins playing with an imaginary friend who,
as expected, is eventually suspected as the source of blood spattering,
dead pets, strange noises, and, of course, the further psychological
disarray of the daughter. The film's overly logical and stretched ending
is a knock to any fine psychological thriller, and the film has been
accused of existing for the sole purpose of yanking your chain in the
last few minutes (the five different endings shot for the picture are
alone evidence of that). None of these issues seems to bother composer
John Ottman, who continued in the 2000's to write music for an odd
assortment of typically unpopular suspense films. There are several
films like Hide and Seek in Ottman's career, sub-par horror
flicks that suit the composer's sensibilities well but sadly lack in
narrative ingenuity and evaporate from the collective public memory
within just a few years. In this case, Ottman replaced originally
assigned horror master Christopher Young, though for much of this score
you probably wouldn't notice the difference. Substituting Ottman for
Young on a project like this, while inevitably irritating some film
music collectors, is no substantial loss in these days of the horror
industry given Ottman's ability and apparent willingness to write music
of a quality undeserved by such productions. Once again, Hide and
Seek is a project for which Ottman presents interesting ideas to his
enthusiasts in an atmosphere that likely could have sufficed with far
less, and the end result is a satisfying listening experience on album.
A handful of very strong melodic cues stretch the effort towards
four-star territory overall, a pleasant surprise given that the mass of
material populating the interior of the score is predictably
non-descript.
The thematic centerpiece of Ottman's score for Hide and Seek is, as usual, his most creative idea for the film. A child's lullaby is penned for the Emily character (Fanning), a simple two-verse, six note piece that strikes similarities to children's rhymes and other songs you'll vaguely recall from your own youth. While bordering on cliche whenever such a "la-la" song is used in this circumstance (especially since Jerry Goldsmith's Poltergeist), Ottman pulls it off without false pretense. Part of this success in the opening cue, as well as in the thematic performances throughout, is due to Ottman's constant reminder of tension in his quiet crescendos, pulses, and other strokes of emphasis on the subtleties of notes in both the forefront and the counterpoint. A superb example of this tension in the face of innocence is developed in "Toy Shrine" and "The Playground," back-to-back album tracks that offer solo piano and string performances that shift with just the right tones of wonderment and curiosity as to pull you into a child's psychological world. The balance between plucked and struck tones in these passages is a keenly devious juggling of innocuous and suspicious sentiment. The action material is less unique to Hide and Seek, though the album is arranged so that the more intriguing rhythmic portions exist at the start. Both "What Did You Do?" and "Can You See Now?" present frantic, alternating string rhythms with uneasy harp, synthetic choir, and slowly rising chord progressions that lead up to each grisly discovery with fantastic gravity. In the latter half of the album, Ottman does resort to stock orchestra hits, less interesting string dissonance, generic ambient tones, and fewer integrations of his established theme. The album's success for you will be determined based upon your liking of the lullaby, however, and Ottman knows this. After Deborah Lurie's wordless introduction of the theme in the opening cue, her version with clever lyrics closes out a suite-like performance as a highlight in the final score cue. The last track on the album is a rock instrument and slow electronica rhythm rendition of the same theme by different adult female voice, and although it shares absolutely no characteristics with the orchestral score, it is surprisingly easy to enjoy in and of itself. Its appeal seems to exist in Ottman's ability to transfer the same melancholy attitude to a rendition of a familiar melody that is instrumentally so different. Overall, Hide and Seek is yet another Ottman score that has three or four fabulous tracks for a compilation surrounded by basically interesting but not substantially fresh horror ideas. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 43:06
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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