: (Brian Tyler) While there had always been
an intent to film six entries in the slasher franchise resulting from
1996's
, the disgrace of producer Harvey Weinstein and
death of director Wes Craven in the 2010's put the concept in limbo.
With the rights reassigned and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler
Gillett talking the helm, the fifth movie, simply titled
,
finally debuted in 2022. The franchise attempted to emulate the
resurrection of the
formula, balancing a combination of
favorite legacy characters and fresh blood to supply future stories. In
this case, that strategy meant the return of four principal members of
the 1996 cast and a bevy of youngsters ready to be slaughtered by new
villains wearing the "ghostface" mask and wielding knives and guns. The
plot of the direct sequel was introspective about the slasher genre,
using fictious movies made about the original Woodsboro killings to
inspire copycats that are related, quite literally, to the murderers
from those massacres. Arguably better than the concurrent
manages to achieve its aim of
featuring its past core (Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David
Arquette) at a satisfactory level. With the directors came their
long-established collaborator, Brian Tyler, to the compositional duties.
The switch makes sense in an industry of preferred relationships, but
from the perspective of fans, the replacement of Marco Beltrami is
needless and disappointing. The music by Beltrami for the first four
films was never high art, but it did have a distinct personality helmed
by a popular main theme, and it has remained well regarded by franchise
enthusiasts. Tyler is no stranger to taking over franchises from
established composers, and he tends to be highly considerate of his
predecessors' scores even if the results aren't spectacular. As per his
usual methodology in these circumstances, Tyler provides
with a minimal amount of instrumental and thematic references to
Beltrami's scores while, at its heart, concentrating on establishing new
ideas to take forward in the concept.
From a distance, Tyler's take on the concept follows the
same basic horror techniques that Beltrami would have employed for
Scream, and in terms of the music's basic juggling of melodic
ideas and stock slasher chaos, this work stands on par with Beltrami's
Scream 4. The score credits only a moderate string section of an
orchestra, though it does feature (possibly virtual) brass and
percussion along with the requisite guitar, piano, synthesizers, and
solo female voice that have come to define Beltrami's scores. Tyler
himself is not directly credited with performances, though it wouldn't
be surprising if he was responsible for fleshing out the depth of the
recording on his own. (Oddly, Beltrami is not credited at all on the
album, either.) The Western twang that carried over to Beltrami's music
from the popular use of Hans Zimmer's material in
Scream 2 isn't
particularly prevalent here. The work is defined by strings for the
suspense, electronic dissonance for the fright, and stabbing brass
explosions for the killing, none of which fresh. The lyrical passages
are, as usual, the highlights, but they are rare and not as impressively
rendered as one would hope from Tyler. The solo female voice is
especially important to the sound of this music, and while Tyler does
match Beltrami's tone well here, the usage is infrequent and often
buried in the ambience. Thematically, Tyler expends the most effort on
establishing a main new theme that shares some of the same basic
structures as Sidney's famous theme from the prior films but strives to
be different. The conclusive suite-like cue, "New Horizons," contains
the best representations of this theme, heard at 0:42 on soft piano and
meandering on strings and further piano in that cue before building at
2:23 with the female voice and slight dissonance. It achieves its
pinnacle at 3:20 in "New Horizons," this fullest ensemble and solo voice
version eventually adopting the rhythmic foundation and suggestions of
major key resolution that made the end of Beltrami's
Scream 3 so
memorable. For most casual listeners, the "New Horizons" track will be
the only enduring highlight of this score, and Tyler, as per usual,
moves it to the front of the album presentation.
The new main theme by Tyler for
Scream extends
into the remainder of the score with minimally effective development,
blending anonymously into conversational or transitional scenes and
doing little to establish itself as this film's top new identity. It's
very slow on piano at 0:05 into "Rules to Survive," shifts to acoustic
guitar at 0:11 into "Apparitions," and returns to piano over eerie
electronic atmosphere at 1:50 into "Amends." The theme enjoys a bit more
prominent light keyboarding at 0:44 and 1:41 into "Not My Story," closes
"Passing the Torch" in tortured drama, and offers a slight suggestion at
1:03 into "Ghostface." Tyler seemingly explores a few other new motifs
in his work for
Scream, but none of these identities is
impactful. A new suspense motif of generically descending figures is
presented late in "Rules to Survive," the middle of "Ring Ring," and
throughout "Welcome to Act Three." More interesting is the seemingly
intentional tribute to the John Carpenter
Halloween scores in how
Tyler handles the "Stab" movie concept within this
Scream story,
going so far as to emulate the heartbeat effect on synths and even
toying around with the opening measures of Carpenter's iconic main
theme. Most of this material is concentrated in "Chromeface," but it
also persists in vague allusions during "Apparitions" and in a lighter
relief mode to open "New Horizons." Most enthusiasts of the
Scream franchise will be interested in hearing Tyler's
interpolations of the existing Beltrami themes into this fifth score,
and he does provide decent but not particularly memorable treatment of
both the Sidney and Dewey identities. The latter remains a quirky
identity, hinted in fragments in "Amends" in original guitar tones and a
very slight guitar reference persisting in the middle of "Diversions."
The character's unsatisfactory handling in the middle act of this
picture is afforded slightly better treatment by Tyler, however, the
idea translated into a dramatic, full-ensemble variant at 4:00 into
"Hospital Visitor." It closes out "Sacrifice" in its original guitar
tones, though the remainder of that cue offers generic thoughtfulness
without any meaningful development of the theme. The character
ultimately deserved better musical handling in these scenes.
The heart and soul of the
Scream franchise will
be Sidney's theme as long as Neve Campbell continues to feature in the
movies, and some fans may argue that the lament of Woodsboro and the
legacy of all these killings should immortalize that theme as the
general representation of the entire concept. Tyler handles the idea
with care in this installment, but his replacement of it by the end
makes it clear that he intends leave Beltrami's themes further behind in
future sequels. In this regard, the composer's approach is much like
that he took towards 2008's
Rambo, supplying fairly adept
connections to Jerry Goldsmith but following with a score for
Rambo:
Last Blood that really replaced the Goldsmith legacy with the new
material from the 2008 work. Look for the same to happen with Sidney's
theme in
Scream, deserved or not. Here, the iconic melody returns
with female voice but in truncated, obscured performances at 0:36 into
"History Repeats." It opens "I Started All This" on slightly urgent
strings without the theme's initial note, and it's hinted briefly on
synthetic choir to close "Welcome to Act Three." One nice, ghostly
phrase on female voice occurs at 0:12 into "Where It All Began," and the
theme is distorted in chaotic action at 0:41 into "Passing the Torch."
Tyler literally replaces the theme with his own at the 2:58 climax of
"New Horizons," the first three notes on solo voice applied as an
introduction to the new main theme. While these applications of Sidney's
theme are welcome, nothing here can beat the vocal and symphonic
presentations of this idea heard in
Scream 3, which remains the
most impressive of all the franchise's scores through the first five.
Everything about Tyler's music for 2022's
Scream sounds
proficient but absolutely none of it truly excels. The composer supplies
the minimum necessary for a coherent continuation of the franchise's
music, but the performances are stale and the dramatic passages fail to
adequately emote. One of the original heroes dies in this film, and many
others of the younger generation do as well, and yet Tyler supplies the
conversational scenes of dread or lamentation with very little weight.
An excessively long album presentation with cues out of chronological
order doesn't help, the listening experience dragging significantly at
several points. Tyler continues to prove himself a safe choice in these
franchise takeovers, but he yet again leaves you wanting for the
previous compositions.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 41 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 19,673 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
