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Review of Before I Wake (The Newton Brothers/Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... for fourteen minutes of impressively dramatic Danny Elfman
tonalities, his material positively influencing some of the music
provided by The Newton Brothers as well.
Avoid it... if you have no interest in hearing a watered-down version of John Debney's Dragonfly joined by an abundance of stock horror stingers and generic suspense outside of the lyrical fantasy portions.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Before I Wake: (The Newton Brothers/Danny Elfman)
Its production languishing for years, the 2016 fantasy horror film
Before I Wake eventually shifted from a theatrical release to one
distributed by Netflix, yielding minimal box office returns. The Mike
Flanagan story and film shares a surprising number of elements with the
similarly creepy but more refined Dragonfly the previous decade.
An orphaned young boy moves from foster home to foster home, leaving a
wake of missing parents. His special "gift" is that his dreams manifest
themselves in real life while he sleeps, causing sadness, elation, and
eventually tragedy when the boy's nightmares about his dead mother start
to dominate. Despite the ridiculousness of the premise, Before I
Wake was pretty well received even if it was shunned by audiences.
The movie is ultimately one of rather generic suspense and horror
scares, and its music was to be provided in the manner of Flanagan's
Oculus; the director's collaboration with composers John Andrew
Grush and Taylor Newton Stewart, otherwise known as "The Newton
Brothers," persisted through the 2010's. In the case of Before I
Wake, one of the executive producers of the film was Danny Elfman's
daughter, and this project represented one of the famous composer's side
ventures to provide music for a family member's project. (Usually, it's
for his brother, Richard.) Elfman thus recorded around fourteen minutes
of music for Before I Wake and set the tone of the score's
fantasy elements. The Newton Brothers, meanwhile, were comfortable
handling the horror elements, as this kind of material has come to
completely dominate their careers. Their respect for Elfman, however,
was felt deeply in the score, and they utilized the services of his
crew, notably lead orchestrator Steve Bartek, in helping their
recordings sound more congruent with Elfman's fantasy portions. The
resulting combination score functions better than one might expect,
especially as thematic elements created by Elfman do carry over into
several cues by The Newton Brothers.
Generally speaking, the score for Before I Wake tries to be John Debney's music for Dragonfly in all its dramatic and fantasy aspects. There were indications from The Newton Brothers that Debney himself was also involved somehow in this score, though no reports can confirm those comments. As with Debney's work, Elfman's fantasy tones are soothing, eerie, palatable, and occasionally beautiful, his approach fully orchestral and supplying much of the score's organic warmth. Soft choral tones vintage to his career are a highlight. The majority provided by The Newton Brothers ranges from lightweight Elfman emulation to borderline Philip Glass drama and, sadly, a mass of ambient jump-scare passages complete with their standard stinger techniques. For a score with a cue named "Something's in the Bathroom," that's to be expected. (No, it isn't a Predator in there. Put down the broom.) The overall musical narrative offers some glimpses of warmth and instrumental depth at fleeting points at its start, but the best material by all composers for Before I Wake exists in the middle third. The final third devolves into muddy horror tactics that do nothing to impress prior to Elfman's long finale cue for the resolution. With this inconsistency of quality in mind, the score is one that requires rearrangement into a twenty-five-minute presentation, but that collection of cues is easily four-star material. Both Elfman and the Newton Brothers are credited with themes, and it's fairly clear that the former provides the fantasy theme for memory, love, and a deceased boy, Sean, while The Newton Brothers coined the main identity for the dream-projecting main character, Cody. The composers all set these themes to piano primary, the typical instrument of happy and safe suburban lifestyles. Elfman adds the orchestral presence to a greater degree in his parts, though strings do carry over to The Newton Brothers' thematic portions. The latter duo presents the score's synthetic elements as per expected in suspense and horror modes. Dissonant sustains and clanging stingers do their part without much instrumental ingenuity. While Elfman doesn't apply Cody's theme to his material, The Newton Brothers do adapt the fantasy melody into theirs in several places, sometimes impressively so. The theme of memory, love, and Sean by Elfman in Before I Wake consists of repeated notes in a meandering ascending movement on high piano, with elusive progressions overall. The piano octaves are so high that they sometimes sound like a celeste. This theme is heard faintly in the first minute of "Somnia" and teased at the outset of "Monarchs," slightly informing the start of "Cody and Annie." Elfman's own presentation unfolds with the full ensemble and choir at 1:12 into "Sean" in a gorgeous performance prior to a dissonant end. The Newton Brothers continue its use, fleeting on strings in "I'm Sorry," where it struggles to get the whole melody out, and informing "Memories of Sean" a bit too lightly to be effective. The theme opens Elfman's "Christmas" cue on piano and cello, shifting to choir and strings in middle and the tonalities of the progressions surviving the melody later in the cue. After a moment of whimsy two minutes into "What Happens When He Dreams?," Elfman closes the score with his theme at 0:46 into "Defeated," adding more strings at 2:10 and exploring secondary descending lines. The idea develops into slower, more fluid pairs of ascending notes until a pretty moment at 8:30 and thereafter to resolve the cue and score. A secondary motif by Elfman contains delicately repeating phrasing on high piano and opens the composer's "Sean" and The Newton Brothers' "Lighterflies." Not appearing in Elfman's cues is the theme for Cody himself, its touch of Philip Glass personality constructed from sometimes solely ascending three-note piano figures in a rhythm. The accompanying theme opens "A New Home" over these rambling piano figures and occupies all of "Cody." It explodes in the middle of "The Life Cycle of Butterflies" with really nice depth to the piano performances. Later on, this idea is minimized, very slight at the start of "Memories of Sean" and briefly returning to rambling form in the middle of "Cody's Past." While none of these themes is spectacular, they are highly attractive in the tonally accessible portions of Before I Wake. They really do remind of Debney's Dragonfly in spirit and performance, absent the overwrought weight. The 69-minute album presentation of 2017 was a 1,000-copy pressing by Varèse Sarabande that sold out but was followed by a digital offering of the same contents. An eight to ten-cue suite is highly recommended, Elfman in top dramatic form and The Newton Brothers showing glimpses of hope amongst their nightmare of stock horror techniques.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 67:55
* composed by Danny Elfman
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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