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FILMTRACKS.COM
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Review of Orphan (John Ottman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are comfortable with John Ottman's habit of
providing morbidly dramatic and appealing themes unrelated to the
otherwise generic, atmospheric suspense scores in which they exist.
Avoid it... if you require either the rip-snorting orchestral bombast that some of Ottman's horror scores contain or a transcendence beyond the basic suspense formula that the composer has used many times before.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Orphan: (John Ottman) When Warner Brothers launched
its advertisement campaign for Orphan early in the summer of
2009, little did they expect to receive such an overwhelmingly organized
response from a plethora of adoption advocacy groups in a national
grassroots campaign. Protests of the film came from more than fifty
organizations, aligning themselves around one Christian-based alliance
that set up a website specifically to denounce the picture. The problem
with their response was two-fold; first, of course, such protests only
serve to drive more attention to the film. Secondly, the much touted
twist at the end of the story has very little to with the controversy
involving adoption and everything to do with pedophilia. Without
question, Orphan and its dirty little secret are truly sick,
reclassifying this film away from the standard horror/thriller variety
and giving it a distinctly perverted edge. In its advertised form,
Orphan tells of a gifted young girl adopted by a loving family
that, before too long, is suffering from her psychotic actions. The
background on this girl is much more complicated than anyone knows, and
despite the mother of the family realizing that something is very wrong
with the girl, nobody believes her. The pedophilic aspect of
Orphan easily the most disturbing aspect of the story, but
luckily composer John Ottman doesn't tackle this assignment with enough
deep thought to address (or foreshadow) that twist. Ottman had
collaborated with director Jaume Collet-Serra in his cinematic debut for
House of Wax, an awful horror flick of 2005 that also happened to
be Ottman's last foray into a genre that constituted most of his early
career. Over the course of the 2000's, Ottman has been steering away
from the kind of substandard horror and suspense assignments that
defined his early production, though Orphan is a clear throwback
to the composer's previous methodology in the genre. As per formula, the
composer provides the film with a largely atmospheric score that blends
smaller orchestral tones with synthetic ambience, supplementing a
largely non-descript collection of creepy environmental material with a
lovely theme or two to highlight the work. Listeners comfortable with
Ottman's production of this variety will find Orphan to be a
predictable but satisfying listening experience, undemanding in its
development but rewarding its harmonic moments.
The majority of the score meanders in a haze of wetly-mixed synthetic elements and faint piano accents. The piano is central to the story (and to the suburban lifestyle in general) and is thus the basis for much of the thematic development in the score. Entire cues can pass without more than just a few slight alterations of pitch, whispering effects providing an uneasy backdrop for otherwise very conservative soundscape. Slapping sounds echo distantly, occasional string shrieks offer the horror, and a synthetic representation of blowing wind wafts through at the forefront. The textures are pretty standard in Ottman's career, and the purely suspense cues (which make up about 80% of the work) will not impress a listener any more than previous incarnations of the same general idea. The appeal in Orphan exists in Ottman's usual thematic touch, a morbidly melodramatic technique that prevails in most of his similar scores. Interestingly, he provides themes for the female characters while largely neglecting the male ones. The "Suite for Jessica and Max" and "Silent Story/Max's Theme" cues provide absolutely lovely piano performances with harmonic string accompaniment while high pitched synthetic effects insert just enough dissonance to maintain a cloudy atmosphere. These two cues are saturated with the kind of depressing but solemnly gorgeous material that made the themes to Gothika and Hide and Seek such standouts compared to the remainder of their respective scores. The only hint that Ottman gives of the little girl's true origins comes in the co-written piece "Orphan," which opens the score with resonating bass, deviant female vocalizations, and metallic effects that contain a hint of the perversion in Goodbye Lover. This cue is especially a necessity in any Ottman suspense collection. Like Hide and Seek, in Orphan there is some source-like material to influence the album. As actress Isabelle Fuhrman performs the 1964 song "Glory of Love" in the film, this short version and two others (including the Jimmy Durante original) appear on the product. A heavier version of the opening piece in "Orphan's Revenge" is drab electronica that doesn't mesh with the remainder of the presentation. Ultimately, it's easy to wish that Ottman would work more twisted variations on his intriguing themes and deceptive harmonic passages (false comforts of sorts) into these types of scores, but without much intellectual thought in the rest of the production, perhaps a bland suspense score with ten minutes of beautiful thematic material alone is the best we could hope for. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 54:50
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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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 Orphan are Copyright © 2009, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/11/09 (and not updated significantly since). Hey, even childlike dwarves need to get laid, too. Imagine how inconvenient that would be if you're the dwarf! |
