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Review of Leave the World Behind (Mac Quayle)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you need hapless, unsettling, avant-garde orchestral suspense music geared towards making you believe conspiracy theories about the end of society.

Avoid it... if you expect to encounter dramatically variable music for a highly personal tale of apocalyptic survival, this cold score supplying no narrative or human connection.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Leave the World Behind: (Mac Quayle) With the support of former American president Barack Obama, the 2023 Julia Roberts production Leave the World Behind postulates that widening cultural divides in the United States will cause the country's destruction. The Netflix movie shows that process as a psychological thriller from the perspective of New Yorkers vacationing on Long Island. The apocalyptic events include the elimination of all internet and television signals, interrupted satellite signals causing ships and airplanes to crash, and leaflets dropped from the sky proclaiming "Death to America." The protagonists are forced to deal with issues of both race and class as they navigate potential friends and foes during the crisis, and the social commentary is laid on with an extra-thick layer of obviousness. The obligatory scene of New York City being heavily bombed at the end provides rather mundane special effects, and the ship and airplane crash scenes are equally tepid in execution. On the upside for those seeking cheap humor in the genre, a long line of Tesla vehicles is shown crashing into a massive pileup on a highway during an auto-pilot takeover while the lead family tries to evade them, a visual which must thrill the automaker. Writer and director Sam Esmail had foreshadowed this kind of damning scenario in his popular television series "Mr. Robot" during the previous decade, and he once again called upon collaborator Mac Quayle, who won an Emmy award for his work on that series, to provide the music for Leave the World Behind. The director made it clear to the longtime television composer that he didn't seek typical horror music for the concept despite some truly scary, near-death scenes, ultimately requiring Quayle to dial back his score at times to suit a more avant-garde environment of suspense. (Even the songs chosen by the director for placement were meant to be off the beaten path.) After determining that a classically-informed orchestral approach was preferred, the two turned to process. Because Esmail wanted no temp score utilized in his editing process, Quayle was compelled to write a variety of suites based upon his initial ideas for the story so they could be used as a temp score instead. While a final score was crafted out of these ideas, only about 20% of the finished work was recorded after the movie's edit to suit individual scenes. The remainder was pieced together by Quayle after he had experimented with three general ideas and recorded them with an orchestra.

The composer constructed the general sound of Leave the World Behind upon tonally unusual scales with the intent of infusing classicism and dissonance. For music students, this meant emulating 20th Century French composer Olivier Messiaen and the third of his Messiaen modes. The challenging environment that results sometimes devolves into straight rhythmic suspense without much overlaid motific action, requiring the typically restrained force of the orchestra's cold demeanor to supply the right emotion for particular scenes. The ensemble consists of 34 strings, 11 brass, 6 woodwinds, and percussion, with piano a well-mixed highlight and techniques sharp all-around. Instruments are sometimes performed to emulate animal sounds. Each section of performers was recorded separately, creating a somewhat intentionally disconnected overall sound to the combined mix. As the plot exposes the degenerate nature of society, and in particular how observing animals are referenced in relation to it, Quayle increasingly slathers on heavy layers of slapping percussion in extremely unnerving methods, culminating in the largely unlistenable "Human vs. Nature." In this and several other, long dissonant crescendos, brass is applied as a blunt tool of abrasion, blurting uncomfortably. Woodwinds, particularly in the higher ranges, aid in creating a secondary suspense atmosphere that is only less uncomfortable due to its underwhelming volume. The entirety of the work is cobbled together without any regard to an overarching narrative or human connection, a trait of the story that inspired the film but one that leaves this score extremely diminished for the final context. The main theme (of sorts) is an ascending, nine-note phrase adapted all over the score, including in some of the earlier rhythmic patterns. The phrase is heard immediately at the start of "Space" on piano but never enunciates itself clearly enough to serve a connective purpose in the way a film score typically strives to connect the movie's ideas. The entire plot of Leave the World Behind is too-conveniently explained in a late scene, and the music that accompanies it in "The Third Stage" fails to capture any of the gravity of the moment, leaving only the acting to carry those duties. Because of how Quayle pieced together his work, there is no beginning, no middle, and no end to be heard in this score, only the same dissonant angst for the entire running time. The music is thus basically sufficient, but it ultimately lacks any personal touch where one was needed in the finished film. It's unpleasant thriller music that starts dirty, digs around in heaps of dirt in the middle, and closes in even more dirt. The downfall of American society demands more dramatic variance than that.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 49:21

• 1. Space (1:12) • 2. Beach Day (2:55) • 3. White Lion (1:50) • 4. Good Omen (1:00) • 5. Knock at the Door (2:10) • 6. Cyberattack (2:28) • 7. The Deer (1:09) • 8. Red Rain (5:29) • 9. Self-Proclaimed Survivalist (3:19)

• 10. Sirens (2:13) • 11. The Flood (1:31) • 12. I'm Done Waiting (4:57) • 13. Spiral (4:33) • 14. We've All Been Deserted (2:06) • 15. Human vs. Nature (5:15) • 16. The Third Stage (5:01) • 17. The Paradigm* (2:20)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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