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Written 12/29/11
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Buy it... only if you can accept Christopher Young's most
understated and difficult atmospheric techniques for over forty
minutes of aimless sound design and challenging, minimal melodic
structures.
Avoid it... if you rely upon Young's characteristic habit of
gracing his horror scores with at least a few minutes of gothic beauty,
a lack of which here truly sinks this dispiriting music on album.
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| Young |
The Grudge: (Christopher Young) If you're feeling
down about the effect of the global recession of the late 2000's on the
real estate market, sleep well knowing that there will always be one
real estate transaction that is infinitely worse than yours. In the
world of the Japanese Ju-on movie franchise, the world's worst
home for sale is one in Japan that is horrifically cursed because of a
series of killings in its confines that perpetually builds a
supernatural force of evil with each person it afflicts. It starts with
the domestic killing of a wife in a fit of jealous rage on the part of
her husband, and before long, the whole family is dead, the next
occupiers are dead, a long line of investigators are dead, and an
American exchange student played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, along with
all of her own friends and family, is next. The story resides somewhere
in between the topics of haunted houses, slasher gore, and torture
fetishes, with fallacies of logic that don't seem to stunt this
ever-growing concept from starting first in Japan and then extending to
a series of American remakes and spin-offs. One laser-guided missile
could solve all of the ills with this particular piece of real estate,
but let's not worry about practical solutions. Filmmaker and concept
creator Takashi Shimizu was retained by Sam Raimi (in a producing role)
to helm the American franchise, which started in 2004 with The
Grudge. Although the budget for the original entry was quite
restricted, veteran horror composer Christopher Young was hired to
continue his magic in the genre. He was already established as a master
of gothic horror music, despite the fact that some of his best successes
in that realm were still to come. He was attached to the first two films
in the American adaptation of this franchise, the latter in 2006
enjoying a larger orchestral and choral presence as a likely result of a
budget twice the size as that of the original production. For The
Grudge, Young provides what stands as one of his most understated
and atmospheric scores in the genre, avoiding many of the standard
formats and mechanisms that typically define this type of music for him.
His efforts in this genre are usually handled with a combination of
gracefully creepy lyricism and unconventional instrumental performance
techniques, and in the absolutely most basic sense, The Grudge
adheres to that formula. But in that approach, his thematic identity and
application to this movie is far less appealing than usual and the
abnormal use of instruments isn't particularly original. It's a rare
miss for Young, one that may service its film adequately, but also an
entry that will fail to meet expectations from many collectors of the
composer's far more interesting works.
The personality of the music in
The Grudge is
troubled in all of its parts and the minimally stocked orchestra is
relegated to duties as sound effects more often than not. The strings
are the seemingly the only straight-forward organic element in the mix,
with the remainder consisting of keyboarded, vocalized, or otherwise
manipulated effects for atmospheric maintenance or necessary stringers.
The score's main melodic construct is often conveyed by an eerie
keyboarded sound that resides somewhere between the chimes and a
cimbalom. A meandering secondary idea is explored by piano in the
central portion of the score but barely registers. Plucky strings are
the most common element in the remainder of the soundscape, though a
hazy environment of dissonant string and sampled effects make up 80% of
the volume throughout. The outright horror portions are treated to mad
plucking and striking of the strings in completely random layers,
forcing the violins into chaotic noisemaking that could have been
synthetic without much loss of effectiveness. Crescendos of this
activity sometimes take minutes to build, culminating in violent
frenzies of itchy sound design that is simply intolerable on album.
Other portions drone aimlessly for extended sequences at a volume that
begs you to amplify the score just in time for the next stinger. The
main theme is the glue that connects Young's two scores for this
franchise together, but there's nothing pleasant about it. The melody
starts with a series of descending pairs of notes that are intentionally
off-kilter, and these pairs are sometimes applied as their own motif in
the rest of the score. The whole theme is treated with broken chords and
extreme restraint on the score's album in "Ju-on Part I" and "Ju-on Part
VIIII," the latter better enunciated. The only redeeming cue on that
product is "Ju-on Part III," which contains the rambling secondary motif
on piano for three minutes of music that is, quite frankly, the only
accessible selection. The lack of any narrative flow in Young's music
for
The Grudge is the most disappointing revelation, perhaps a
choice meant to represent the never-ending nature of the curse that
haunts this one residence. The album, especially with its lack of
individual cue titles, the music plays like a stock library of various
shades of dread that the director could access and insert at any point
in the movie. Even if you accept this format of presentation, there is
little of interest in the score's demeanor, execution, or melodic
aspects to win you over. Some say that
The Grudge is a score that
requires several listens to fully appreciate, though this reviewer is
just as annoyed by it on the fourth pass. For a better articulated
version of the same general ideas, seek Young's score for
The Grudge
2, a far more dynamic recording that extends the main theme and adds
several more organic elements, including a gothic choir, to the
equation. Go ahead and curse it.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Christopher Young reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.48
(in 27 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.17
(in 10,920 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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