: (Marco Beltrami) Perhaps the most
fascinating statement ever made by director Guillermo del Toro was one
in which he confessed that his experience making the 1997 movie
was more frustrating than even the kidnapping of his own
father in Mexico, which happened at roughly the same time. The
production woes involving the film were mostly caused by the distrust of
the young director by producer Bob Weinstein, who constantly imposed his
personal will upon nearly every aspect of the movie. The fundamental
purpose of the plot was at stake in the disagreement, Del Toro seeking
to make a comment about the human ego through artistic merit and
Weinstein looking to reap the benefits of the standard B-rate slasher
techniques that had just been resurrected by his own company. The plot
is one that takes several elements from the
franchise and
places them in the subway system underneath New York City. When a pair
of cocky scientists genetically engineer an insect meant to wipe out the
city's cockroaches, which are spreading a disease that is killing human
children, they succeed by inadvertently equipping their new species with
the capability to evolve at incredibly fast rates. After only three
years, this species has grown to human size and, for the convenient
purposes of a horror film, both feast on humans for their food and can
emulate their looks well enough to cause another layer of panic. Despite
Del Toro's attempts to make the film "beautiful" in its conveyance of
the insects, the final product took the shape of the cheap horror flick
that Weinstein had in mind, and
was ultimately dismissed by
critics and audiences alike, failing to recoup its $30 million budget in
domestic grosses. Despite its many faults, the movie was an important
stepping stone for composer Marco Beltrami, however, the second in a
long collaboration with the Weinsteins that would launch and sustain his
early career.
Moreover,
Mimic was evidence that the prior
collaboration between the composer and producers,
Scream, was not
a fluke. While Beltrami's contribution to
Scream did not flow
completely smoothly in production, either, it did introduce a striking
melody and beefy orchestral horror sound to its franchise, and
Mimic is largely a continuation of that same general technique.
The composer did have to report to both Del Toro and Weinstein during
his creation process, an awkward situation by Beltrami's recollection,
but his work managed to satisfy both parties. In particular, the
director pushed Beltrami to expose his thematic portions of
Mimic
with straight forward lyricism to emphasize his interpretation of the
beauty of the topic. Not surprisingly, the result is a score that is
quite accessible within the confined of its genre. There will be
listeners for whom the horror genre, with all of its stingers and
unpleasant orchestral applications, will never be appealing on album,
but for a novice collector entering the genre for the first time,
Mimic is a relatively safe place to start. In these regards, it's
much like a Christopher Young horror score, utilizing orchestra and
choir in gothic mode, applying at least one redemptive, lovely theme,
and letting rip with rhythmic sequences of action for varied percussion
that will shake the walls. One of the reasons Beltrami looks back fondly
upon
Mimic is its organic origins; even though the industry was
pretty much computerized by the late 1990's, this score was a "pencil on
paper" product that was recorded with the entire orchestra playing
together and with minimal electronic manipulation. There are synthetic
accents employed in the score, but in the mass of the score, what you
hear is unadulterated orchestral performances in natural unison. As
such, Beltrami was able to orchestrate much of the music himself,
exploring a variety of clicking sounds meant to emulate the language and
other noises of the insect species. Starting in "Release the Judas," he
teases out several percussive techniques that will eventually dominate
the later action sequences.
A crispness to the orchestral performances and mix in
Mimic is further evidence of the organic nature of the recording,
with much of the score resembling
Species and other equivalent
Young works, especially by the last forty seconds of "Fleeing Terror,"
which is almost a pure homage to the more established horror master's
style. There is really only one primary theme in
Mimic, and it
speaks to both tragedy and beauty, but Beltrami manipulates it so well
that it applies to nearly any circumstance in the picture. Its grandiose
but troubled performance at the height of "Main Titles" dissolves to
melodramatic dread in "Children's Hospital." It survives to become the
subject of a surprisingly pretty flute performance in "I'll Go" and a
duo of sublime, easily tonal presentations in "Reunited" and "End
Credits," the former featuring brass counterpoint of Jerry Goldsmith
resemblance and the latter resounding with immense choral accompaniment.
There are some casual similarities between this theme and Sidney's
identity in the
Scream scores, and the anticipatory harmonies
under the major performances are related as well, especially in the
culmination of "End Credits." The score does access genre stereotypes at
times, including the boy soprano right at the start (seemingly an
ominous twist on Graeme Revell's concurrent usage in
The Saint)
and slashing strings and exploding brass hits for stingers in the
central portion of the score. Still, there are enough accessible
highlights in
Mimic to recommend the score as an entry point for
non-horror film music collectors. The original 1997 Varèse
Sarabande album contained the score's highlights and an average rock
song, but the label's 2011 limited and expanded run of 1,000 copies of
the score alone contains several important thematic additions and
noticeably improved sound quality. This product quickly sold out,
escalating to absurd collector's prices. The label thus re-issued the
same presentation twice, first as part of its expensive, 1,500-copy
"Little Box of Horrors" 12-CD set in 2016 and on its own for another,
newly remastered, 1,000-copy run in 2022. Any incarnation of this longer
album is a necessity in a substantial Beltrami collection, best
representing one of the composer's top horror efforts.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
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