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Review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Steve Jablonsky)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you were captivated by the music in the film, because this
score is among the worst of the 2000's in any genre.
Avoid it... if you are tired of uninteresting, droning, and generic horror underscores that accomplish nothing unique in comparison to the hundreds of other low budget efforts just like it.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: (Steve Jablonsky) When a
survivor of the famous mass murder case stepped forward in the early 2000's to
update the public's morbid curiosity about this true historical event, producer
Michael Bay decided to bring another "inspired by" version of The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre to the big screen. The August, 1973 killing spree left over
thirty people dead, and the film follows the story of five particular youths who
stumbled upon the famed Hewitt house and encountered Leatherface, the
chainsaw-wielding butcher who wore his victim's flesh and was supposedly gunned
down eventually by police. All around, it's one of those grim situations that
begs for continued teenage horror flick treatment, and this one sold itself
beyond all of the others by roughly following what it deemed a true event. The
director of the project, Marcus Nispel, made it clear from the start that he
wanted a score that was "dissonant, atonal, subliminal, and disturbing," not to
mention that it had to be written and recorded in a very short time period and
was to be restrained to a very small budget. Enter Steve Jablonsky, a composer
who hadn't experienced the solo composition credit spotlight to any great degree.
But he did have extensive experience in the house of Media Ventures, and if there
was ever a time to mention the dreaded Media Venture lawsuit that was under way
between its co-founders, Jay Rifkin and Hans Zimmer, this would be that time.
Jablonsky was, in short, the poster child for everything sinister about the
"ghostwriting" industry in Hollywood. Some say that receiving credit for
assisting another composer in small print nullifies the "ghostwriting"
descriptor, but when that mainstream composer uses such help so often that it
completely dilutes his music (while maintaining his name solely on posters and
album covers), there is no better term to employ. Jablonsky had written
"additional music" for everything from Armageddon and Chicken Run
to Pearl Harbor and Hannibal. He even played his part in the
logistical nightmare otherwise known as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of
the Black Pearl. When film music industry insiders made noise about the
ghostwriting problem in Hollywood during this era, they were referring to puppets
like Jablonsky who write a lot of music (not all of it fantastic by any means)
but get very little recognition for it.
It is a shame, therefore, that Jablonsky's first major feature film assignment would be one of such a low budget and low standards, following wishes to explore musical territory doomed to fail. The composer's work for video games and television series was perhaps a better indicator of Jablonsky's talent, for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just as much of a nightmare for film score listeners as the massacre itself was for its thirty-three victims. Christopher Young had single-handedly proven that horror scores can be extremely effective by alternating all of Nispel's sonic requests (dissonant, atonal, subliminal, disturbing, etc) with elements of traditional harmony and melody that, if anything, puts the listener even more on the edge of his or her seat. But in the case of Jablonsky and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we hear the dreaded, precise result of the lowest expectations when imagining small budget horror scores of extreme, dissonant ambience. This score once again raised questions about the fine line between music and atmospheric sound design (or simple library effects), and it is far from being as interesting as New Line Cinema's previous slashing horror entry, Freddy vs. Jason in 2003, which featured music from Graeme Revell that was both functional and interesting when heard apart from the film. What Jablonsky wrote for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is very simplistic, with a subtle motif (it doesn't really qualify as a theme) for the Hewitt house and Leatherface that appears just two or three times over the course of the film. Otherwise, the music rumbles with stock droning sounds of the keyboards and mucks around below the surface of expressive characteristics for much of its length. That is, of course, unless someone's being dismembered by a chainsaw, in which case Jablonsky slams on the synthetic drums and percussive clangs. Frenetic string effects are jarring in their application to these slashing moments, and their use points to a flaw with the general recording. When the score needs vibrant life, such as in "Mercy Killing," the music is held at a distance by a muted, dull recording quality. Parts of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may have been intriguing on album if more of the subtleties could have been heard over the basic, droning, flat atmosphere sustained by murky sound quality. The score is so generic in its cliche horror techniques that the album features a false resolution in which a somewhat harmonic statement within the final cue is battered by a sudden crashing of electronic noise. Overall, between the composition and its recording, this is one mystery best left undiscovered. *
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 50:25
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes detailed notes about both the score and 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 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are Copyright © 2003, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/2/04 and last updated 3/16/09. |
