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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Prey (Sarah Schachner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are ready for a fresh start in the music of this
franchise, Sarah Schachner opting for a sparse and historically minded
tone of extremely abrasive and raw anger for this film.
Avoid it... if you seek any of the coolness, wonder, bravado, or complete statements of the main themes established by Alan Silvestri in the franchise.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Prey: (Sarah Schachner) The concept of the original
1987 film, Predator, has expanded through the years as the need
for fresh killing scenarios has persisted, associated literature
suggesting that the Predator race has been hunting humans on Earth for
centuries. As the technology of these alien Predators has improved
through time, so has that of the humans, keeping the latter reasonably
competitive as a choice of battle for the Predator race obsessed with
killing as part of their rite of passage. From the perspective of film
studios, the liberty to place the Predators up against populations and
animals from throughout history opens an entire new set of potential
profits, and 2022's Prey cashes in. (Watch out, Egyptians,
Romans, and kangaroos... you're next!) In this entry, the Predators have
decided to use a Comanche tribe in the early 18th Century as their
target, along with French fur traders causing trouble for everyone and
in clear need of elimination. A young Comanche woman, Naru, plays an
important role in helping her tribe defend against the Predator,
eventually dueling the alien in one-on-one combat. The general narrative
of Prey is, in its most basic form, not much different from that
of the original movie, and these horror thrillers continue to push
dismemberment fetishes whether they involve humans or animals. It's
grotesque entertainment for audiences with insatiable appetites for
violent confrontation and eager to see characters get their arms, legs,
and heads torn off in fairly graphic detail. Still, critics and
audiences sucked it up, lavishing the movie with the highest praise
since the 1987 debut of the franchise. Director Dan Trachtenberg had
collaborated previously with composer Bear McCreary but was impressed by
Sarah Schachner's music for the "Assassin's Creed" video games and hired
her to write the score for Prey. For Schachner, whose career was
largely guided to this point by her collaborations with Brian Tyler on
the big screen and for video games, this movie represented a major
breakthrough assignment. She and Trachtenberg approached the score with
a very carefully measured approach that took into account historical
Comanche musical methods and a variety of other primordial tones on
percussion, strings, and wind. Most importantly, the attitude of the
score is brutally dark for most of its length, the setting and violence
allowing for very little respite from terror and darkness.
From an intellectual standpoint, the personality Schachner devises for Prey demands attention, though few will find it to be a pleasant experience. While historically minded vocals, winds, and percussion provide the intrigue of color to the score, it's the absolutely resolute anger in the string section, and particularly a solo cello, that defines this work. Few soundtracks are as abrasively hostile as this one in their performance inflection and mix, Schachner starting from the bleak atmosphere of Ryuichi Sakamoto's The Revenant and twisting that sound to pure menace via string mutilation akin to Tyler's Those Who Wish Me Dead. Aside from the moderately lyrical material for Naru, everything seems to drone on key in the work, the intelligence of the instrumental applications defied by structural simplicity that becomes tiresome fast. The constant striking on key, some of which seems electronically enhanced, overpowers the accents like the ethnic flute wails a la James Horner in "Horseback Ambush." Still, the totally raw tone has its own attraction in that it does sound different from other film scores when expressed with this ensemble, so the techniques aren't without some merit. Listeners seeking solace in a thematic narrative will find a fairly consistent set of melodies, but they do tend to get overwhelmed by surrounding rhythmic pounding for action and suspense. The themes also don't evolve much in the score, aside from their adoption of some of the attitude and instrumentation of each other as the prey turns into the predator. The idea for Naru is the clear highlight of the work, the only semblance of hope in the otherwise brutal musical environment. This tonally accessible theme is dogged, however, by rhythmic and harmonic similarities to Trevor Jones' well-known Last of the Mohicans, especially as it achieves its most concentrated performances. The Naru theme develops during "Beyond the Great Plains" but shines throughout "Naru's Way." Its rhythmic progressions teased in "Moon Wanderer" are twisted into something different in the latter half of "The Cruel Delight," but they regain confidence suddenly and forcefully at 3:07 into "Brave Girl" and in latter half of "Seeing With New Eyes" as she learns to use the Predator's technology against it. By the end of the score, the performances of her theme lose what little romantic sensibility existed for both her and the landscape in earlier cues, taking on the primal, mean-spirited abrasiveness of the Predator's theme in this score. That four-note motif of simplistic power could be described as a mindless devolving of the Naru theme's rhythm, and it never changes its tact throughout. Debuting in Prey at 2:02 into "Predator Instinct," the new Predator motif returns in the first half of "The Onslaught," becomes less cohesive in "Horseback Ambush," and reasserts itself in the middle of "Brave Girl," tacked on after a silence at 3:53 into that cue as well. The theme experiences an aggressive variant in "The Hunter" that seems to infuse elements of both primary ideas into one basic chopping figure on key. Some listeners will only care to know whether Alan Silvestri's iconic themes from the original Predator return in Prey, as they had been adapted into all four major sequels to the film over the previous decades. Schachner doesn't completely dismiss Silvestri's material, but she doesn't outright reprise its original form like John Debney and Henry Jackman had. Only the bassline of the main, six-note Silvestri rhythm truly remains in this score, shifted from thumping percussion to slashing low strings throughout "Predator Instinct." This application continues as a stinger late in "Foolish Foray" and during parts of "Brave Girl." Those listening hard for Silvestri's actual main theme may hear it vaguely hinted at 1:30 into "Trapped," but that's about it. While the teasing of Silvestri's rhythmic figure is appreciated, many audiences won't make the subtle connection. There also remains no reason why composers have had to abandon Silvestri's fantasy motif for the spacecraft arrival element of the Predators. Content to blaze her own path, Schachner falls short in connecting this score to the concept's basic sound, the percussion selected not necessarily needing to match Silvestri's piano-dominated tone but ultimately too far removed to be musically related. All of the coolness and wonder factor of Silvestri's score is gone. In short, Prey is not a Predator score, and some halfway point between the two disparate sounds would have been preferred. As it stands, Prey is adequate to the task but dissatisfyingly disconnected from the franchise. Its rendering is so hostile in performance inflection that it makes for a poor listening experience on album. The distortion effects for the fires in Those Who Wish Me Dead return in "The Night Has Ears," and this droning dissonance is extremely unpleasant. The middle portions of the 45-minute album drag badly, Schachner's percussive stalking music offering little of substance and not always genuinely exciting. Aside from the solemnly pretty duo of "Beyond the Great Plains" and "Naru's Way," the score will be an immense challenge. For those that can immerse themselves in a depressing, marginally exotic expression of animosity, the melodic cues, along with the vocals of "Communion," will distract from an otherwise consistently bitter atmosphere of sparsely impassioned enmity.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 45:19
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for this album.
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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 Prey are Copyright © 2022, Hollywood Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 8/19/22 (and not updated significantly since). |
