Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #541
Written 9/24/96, Revised 9/9/08
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Buy it... only if you are endlessly enamored by the early horror styles of
Danny Elfman's career, including the excerpts you've heard from Scrooged.
Avoid it... if you expect to hear any of the melodramatic themes, cohesive
constructs, or harmonic structures of Elfman's early works.
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| Elfman |
The Frighteners: (Danny Elfman) Several years before his
adventures with The Lord of the Rings, director Peter Jackson brought the
campy ghost story of The Frighteners to the big screen. The 1996 film
starred Michael J. Fox as a person who could see and talk to ghosts, and thus, the
production was rich for its time in the amount of CGI effects generously provided
for the audience. As to be expected, The Frighteners, despite its
considerable comedy in dark places, is a horror film. In any incarnation, though,
it was dead on arrival at the box office. For Jackson, it would be the final
venture that he would direct before diving into the three film adaptations of
The Lord of the Rings, and his sparse directorial output before The
Frighteners often utilized the music of Peter Dasent. His hiring of composer
Danny Elfman for the project was not an obvious choice, but a well grounded one.
The composer was no stranger to the horror genre, especially with projects that had
similarly suspect popular appeal (such as Darkman and Nightbreed).
These films allowed Elfman the ability to fully unleash the darker side of his
talents while inserting brooding, melancholy themes at his leisure (something all
his fans know he loved to do at the time). With The Frighteners, you get the
same basic formula of Elfman's previous horror writing, but without the same
trailblazing spirit that you heard during the inspired moments of those previous
scores. With similarities in subject matter, The Frighteners is handled with
some of the same combination of horror and absurdity as Scrooged, which was
one of Elfman's earliest orchestral efforts. Like Scrooged, the score for
The Frighteners establishes a mock horror style and occasionally interrupts
it with a touch of comedy flair. Unfortunately, by 1996, this sound from Elfman was
becoming repetitive, if not downright old and overused, and thus, The
Frighteners suffers from the lack of originality or distinct character with
which to recall it when pondering Elfman's career. Compared to nearly all of
Elfman's other works, this entry is completely forgettable.
If you study each of the elements by themselves, Elfman's
construction of the music for
The Frighteners is by no means repulsive or
inadequate. Individual elements excel. The strings quiver and tear in Elfman's
usual, frenetic fashion. The brass explode with disjointed motifs of very complex
performance. A light, female choir dances with troubled spirit throughout the
effort. Specialty percussion instruments highlight the work of Elfman's usual and
interesting partners in orchestration. A harpsichord, several chimes, tambourines,
a flourishing harp, and, most importantly, the use of a tolling bell effect all
signify that death is near. An organ adds the necessary religious aspect to the
mix. The bass bassoons are given their typical, deep, and bloated performances. The
string section is often led by a single violin or viola performing a wicked (if not
nasty) solo rhythm, which is another trademark of Elfman's earlier years. If you
are seeing a pattern here, then you'll recognize that it's one of repetition in
Elfman's adaptation of his own previous styles (if not exact material when you
consider the underlying structures). If
The Frighteners had debuted in 1988,
then it would be able to carry much more critical success with it, because by 1996,
every element of its construct was becoming tiresome in Elfman's career. Some
aspects of his music were starting to chang, however, and mostly towards the
disjointed end of the scale. The light female choir used for
The
Frighteners, whether performing whole notes or single bursts in rapid
succession, no longer performed in harmonious counterpoint to whatever thematic
development Elfman was attempting to create. Such a technique would become even
more obvious in
Mars Attacks!, by which time Elfman's use of that kind of
choir became known for its comedic value rather than an its awe or fear inspiring
nature. With the composer's previous ideas for the genre thrust together as a
horror score package,
The Frighteners is correctly identified by many
mainstream listeners as lacking much cohesion or singular creativity. Fans will
likely overlook this stumble by Elfman, although it should be noted that the
commercial album (complete with the mellow end credits song) doesn't do the music
much justice, missing considerable material from lengthy sections of the score.
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Bias Check:
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.12
(in 95 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 154,830 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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