: (Christopher Young) Because people
are inherently stupid creatures, they have been historically afraid of
nonsensical things like the female demon Abyzou, which is supposedly
responsible for infant mortality and miscarriages in some Jewish and
other Eastern European cultures. On the upside, though, such concoctions
provide more fodder for trashy horror films too lazy to make up their
own creative villains of quasi-religious origins. One such entry was
2022's
, which plunders the fears of Orthodox and
Hasidic Jews by tossing an actual manifestation of Abyzou into modern
New York lifestyles. The plotline of the movie is as ridiculous as any
such horror flick, some combination of amulet and dagger and
incantations and other routine sacrificial buffoonery combining to
affect the lives of otherwise sensible 21st Century smartphone owners.
All that matters is that much of a Jewish family that runs a Brooklyn
funeral home gets wiped out by the resurrection of this nasty demon, and
the non-Jewish woman who married into that mess ends up significantly
troubled by the experience. More importantly, there are illogical
actions and senseless killings amongst standard jump scares, few of
which impressed audiences outside of genre enthusiasts. The upstart
director was a fan of composer Christopher Young's classic horror works
of the 1980's and beyond, and he jumped at the chance to throw what
money he had at Young for yet another genre entry in the composer's long
career. His output was waning by the 2020's, having lost his way in the
mainstream many years prior and relegated to assignments such as
. Although that turn of events has been a long-term shame
for Young's many admirers, he was happy to be involved with the
filmmakers and studio in this case, expressing a dose of zeal over his
opportunity to tackle the concept of Abyzou as well. He's never been
afraid to explore exotic dissonance alongside his trademark gothic
magnificence for strange religious concepts, and he unleashed mostly the
former for this occasion. Some of the composer's challengingly atonal
and outright heinous film scores for shameful horror flicks are purely
unlistenable apart of the film, and the rather brief music in this case
qualifies as defining that side of the coin.
While the majority of Young's short score for
The
Offering is an exercise in tolerance, he cannot resist throwing some
lovely elements into the mix for the dichotomies he tends to prefer. In
this case, he starts with the minimalistic but fairly pretty song, "Hear
the Souls Who Weep," and uses the score to deconstruct its female
child's lullaby as appropriate for the topic. The use of that voice here
is something of an equivalent to what he would accomplish with various
flutes the following year for
The Piper, but not with the same
measure of allure. The Jewish influence for the concept manifests in the
solo violin and ram's horn, both stereotypical in that culture, and the
latter is actually quite funny in how awfully brutal it sounds as
rendered. There isn't any fully orchestral presence in the score until
its final minutes, though some of that depth sounds synthetic as
required by the budget. Outside of that resolution, string elements are
typical in their horror applications. On top of the solo female voice,
the choral tones are deeply male and menacing in tone, even before their
manipulated distortion causes them to sound like slaughtered animals.
The hideous noises produced for these vocals might sound like John
Williams'
Images if not for the extreme processing which makes
them even more amusingly awful here. Meanwhile, whispering female and
child voices play to the insanity model at times as well. Low synth
drones offer a slightly organ-like presence for religious connections,
and those tones extend out of the highly distorted vocals to yield
static at 12:00 into "Abyzou." Percussion supplies funeral procession
emulation in its deep thuds and metal clangs, and glassy elements bounce
around in ambience during the third minute of "The Thief of Unborn."
Piano offers some tinkling, processed effects in the middle of that cue,
and the middle of "Horrid Screams of Hell" uses these light rhythms
against aggressive blurting of the ram's horn for pure force of will.
Young's sound effects include a creaking door sampling that moves
between the sides of the stereo landscape; this technique is especially
prevalent in "Abyzou," as are grinding metallic noises. Later, the
sudden release of air is used as effects as if the story takes place on
a submarine. The malice with which all of these ingredients is conveyed
is pervasive, and the manipulation of the stereo landscape is
particularly unnerving.
The narrative of
The Offering forces you to wait
until the very end for any kind of palatable payoff. The rest is simply
abysmal. The outright dissonance of pure horror after six minutes into
"Abyzou" is so bad, it's humorous, and the use of voices both in the
guttural low ranges and upper-range screaming is outrageously delirious.
One could argue that the vocal and ram's horn material after ten minutes
into "Abyzou" could be used for torture, or at least accessed as the
kind of thing you crank up to prank other people outside of context.
Likewise, the explosion at 14:25 in this cue is perfect for use as an
alarm if you have trouble waking in mornings. By the latter half of
"Abyzou," there's almost no melodic construct left whatsoever from the
song's previewing at the opening of the cue. It mostly drones on key
with various manipulated lines of heinous noise on top. The same
brutalization occurs after six minutes into "The Thief of Unborn." And
yet, there is the Young-appropriate payoff, which comes with the
suddenly gothic, low brass broadside at 4:34 into "Horrid Screams of
Hell." This material isn't as gloriously attractive as the composer's
best tonally gothic material, but it sounds like lesser leftovers from
Priest, especially in the wavering string lines underneath, and
that's certainly far better than anything heard before in the work.
There's only one theme in
The Offering, and as mentioned
previously, it's the basis of the song "Hear the Souls Who Weep." That
performance is sparsely somber with a solo female child's voice over
acoustic guitar, violin, and synths only. Its structure follows a
typical lullaby formation heard first at 0:14 into the song, and a
cascading interlude sequence at 1:18 is more ominously conveyed with
droning synth bass. (For whatever reason, that secondary passage never
appears in the score, sadly.) The theme opens each of the three long
score suites, each one losing cohesion with increasing distortion. The
idea very slowly opens "Abyzou" on the solo female voice in eerie
reverberation, and that added style of reverb allows the melody to
literally slip away at the ends of its phrases and then do so completely
at the conclusion of its entire sequence. The deep male choral threats
thereafter in "Abyzou" twist phrases from the theme into perverse
variants with almost tribal glee. Only the solo violin lament of
distantly alluring character at 5:20 reminds of where the theme has once
been.
The same echoing of the voice from the long, opening
cue in
The Offering moves around the soundscape with the theme at
the start of "The Thief of Unborn." The manipulation is effective but
unlistenable this time, dissolving over two minutes before returning in
the fourth minute at an even greater distance from the listener. A
keyboard offers completely wayward pieces of the idea against faint
vocal lines late in that cue, too. An even more manipulated version
opens "Horrid Screams of Hell" like a damaged old tape. It's not really
effective because it instead proves itself highly distracting for two
minutes, such usage prompting confusion and annoyance rather than fear.
That said, the ram's horn blasts of its phrasing in "Horrid Screams of
Hell" earn some interest. After the abrupt shift to the orchestral
presence in that cue, a string/synth combination takes the main theme at
4:55 over brass foghorn effects. The tonalities are still highly
disturbed until the ensemble turns grandiose at 5:45, where the
underlying chords guide the climactic, accessible finale more than the
melody itself. After the cymbal-shimmering crescendo ending at 7:35, a
murky drone closes out the score. Don't expect the melody of that theme
to resonate at any point in this soundtrack, the impressive closing
minutes of resolution in "Horrid Screams of Hell" earning most of its
praise simply because it's not the wretched experience heard prior in
the score. The song rendition of the theme is really just an extension
of the score in personality, but don't expect even a glimmer of warmth
there, either. Ultimately, the extraordinarily challenging use of vocals
and ram's horn, with and without unfathomable processing, are the main
dish in this meal, with the closing few minutes a superfluous desert.
Use the truly wretched dissonance of "Abyzou" to annoy your roommates
and neighbors, because without that sense of humor, there's little other
purpose for it outside of context. Sometimes, the music is so terrible
that induces involuntary chuckles or laughter, and that's the chance you
take with the kind of experimentation heard in
The Offering.
Casual enthusiasts of Young's career might find the closing sequence of
the 38-minute album appropriate for a compilation of the composer's
horror works, but don't expect it to really shine against his other
scores. The rest of it would be prime material for animal testing,
especially if you need music that would psychologically damage and thus
perhaps silence your neighbor's troublesome rooster that crows endlessly
all day.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Christopher Young reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.39
(in 31 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.12
(in 12,092 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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