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There are surprisingly few attractive organic elements at work in Young's Pet Sematary. String accents seem more uniquely acoustic, including some ambient support and plucked sequences. Keyboarded moments, sometimes joined by harp, represent all the score's warmth, led by solitary piano. That instrument, along with strings and light percussion of the tonal portions, conveys vintage Young techniques from the 1990's. Exotic sounds for the cemetery include wood flutes, wind chimes, bells, and tom-tom drums, a half-hearted nod to the Native American element but not overly obvious. The undead material is represented by highly brutalized low string textures, and while some of these processed sounds were meant to sound like a screaming cat, you may find it hard to make the connection. The extreme female vocal manipulations in this recording pave the way for The Offering a few years later, and the primary child female vocals are incidentally performed by composer George Kallis' daughter. The score can be divided into three modes of operation, the aforementioned Native American personality for the mystery and heritage of the cemetery alternating with the highly dissonant undead material for the score's darker half. Five or six cues in the work are completely dominated by this largely inaccessible music. The rest of the score alternates between muted suspense and Young's theme for the family, which receives a variety of full and mutated performances as the story propels that group to hell. The family theme is a two-part identity of introspective sadness, with an introductory rhythm repeating almost ritualistically. The melody itself sounds a bit like David Arnold's main theme from The World is Not Enough, which is somewhat distracting but at least makes the idea easy to identify. Never does this motif ever receive a gothic flourish of beauty, that facet of the composer's music completely absent from this work, leaving the tonal portions far more subtle as a relief valve. The family theme is glassy and obtuse as it dwells mostly on the introductory phrasing in "The Maine Road," supplanted by both that intro and the main melody on pretty piano in "Fielding Fine." Both parts of the idea are contemplative and worried on keyboards in "Dead Alive Again," consolidating nicely on piano late in the cue. The expected intro rhythm leads into synthy female manipulation in "Un Hallowed Even," where the material is extremely distorted in light, upper-range melodicism.

Interestingly, the main family theme in Pet Sematary doesn't evolve much in the second half of the score despite members of the family assuming new forms. The theme's introductory rhythm barely survives at the outset and end of "Fouled Soil," and the instrumentation from "The Maine Road" returns in "Just Not the Same" as the theme's two parts are twisted structurally. Finally, the idea supplies the somewhat disingenuously pleasant coda in the nicely rounded, extended performance of "Wasn't the Beginning." The motif for the cemetery and fantasy aspect of the undead uses the slight Native American percussive and wind elements in a few sequences, barely touched structurally in "The Wendigo" despite dominating the soundscape. Its slow, descending synth melody is revealed at 3:08 into "But the Cat Has No Hat" and more coherent in parts of "Underground Terrors," that melody reappearing late. Fragmented in the highly manipulated female voices of "Scream for More," this motif recurs in the second half of "Un Hallowed Even," coming out of the main theme's distorted phrases. It's deceptively angelic on tonal female voices over creepy string sustain in "Echo Angels," toils around the edges of "Just Not the Same" and the start of "Die Daddy Die," and harmonizes well at the start of "Wasn’t the Beginning" in vintage Mark Snow tones from "The X-Files." The outright horror material for the undead uses extremely unpleasant blurting rhythms with bass pulses and drones under sound effects, processed vocals and whispering functioning as unnerving ambience over those rhythms. Explosively abrasive and extremely loud in the middle of "The Wendigo," this approach is developed throughout "But the Cat Has No Hat" and reprised more lightly in "Underground Terrors." It repeats its sinister atmospherics throughout "Fouled Soil," builds to a horrific crescendo in "Watching the Dead Do," and resorts to outright dissonant pounding in "Die Daddy Die" with awful manipulation. None of the darker material in Pet Sematary will be palatable for the casual listener, and it's not among the composer's more interesting sonic concoctions, either, leaving solely the easy but restrained family theme's ten minutes of exploration as a tonal attraction. The personality of the whole score lacks the punch of originality that the composer is known for, leaving it as a workmanlike but somewhat anonymous endeavor. The Ramones' punk rock song "Pet Sematary" from the 1989 film experiences a horrible end credits cover in the remake, spoiling the oddly peaceful closing ambience of Young's music.  ***   @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.

Total Time: 66:14