Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,548
Written 10/18/11
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Buy it... if you like hearing Marco Beltrami in his comfort zone,
providing predictable horror music for the interior of this prequel
while bracketing it with impressively tonal, melodic expressions of
tragedy.
Avoid it... if only one obvious, token nod to Ennio Morricone's
music for the 1982 movie, as well as practically no stylistic similarity
between the two scores, is too much disparity within the same concept
for your ears.
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| Beltrami |
The Thing: (Marco Beltrami) Considering how many
really substandard remakes of classic horror films have been attempted
through the years, it's satisfying to see that the filmmakers
responsible for 2011's The Thing decided to make their film a
prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 version rather than attempt to improve
upon it. So faithful was Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel that
painstaking care was made to create sets absolutely identical to those
seen in the 1982 movie when applicable, literally using screen captures
from that film to fill in as much detail in the prequel's design as
possible. Plot points also had to be accounted for, and every last clue
learned in Carpenter's movie is addressed in the narrative of the new
The Thing. The prequel's plot details the events leading up to
demise of the Norwegian camp in Antarctica, depicting the initial
discovery of the alien "thing" in its crashed spaceship, its escape, and
its subsequent instigation of the murders that followed as the occupants
of the camp, padded by a few Americans, turn their paranoia against each
other. The protagonist is an American female scientist who attempts to
discover the cellular capabilities of the creature, but she inevitably
is caught in the middle of the standoff between terrified groups in the
camp. The prequel carefully builds momentum to the exact scene involving
the helicopter pursuit of a running dog (taken over by the "thing")
witnessed at the start of the 1982 film. The amount of loyalty to the
concept earned the 2011 version of The Thing some kudos from
critics, though in their mixed reactions they cited its unfortunate
redundancy with the original as a detriment. Essentially, both plots
push the same horror genre buttons, the prequel degenerating into a
shock fest rather than meeting its goals of accentuating character
drama. The score for the 1982 movie was not among Carpenter's own
musical efforts, but rather by famed composer Ennio Morricone. His take
on the concept is remembered by an extremely lonely organ theme over an
echoing, thumping electronic heartbeat effect. For the 2011 prequel,
horror master Marco Beltrami was hired to do the honors of setting up
Morricone's score, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the
resulting music is the fact that despite all of the attempts made by the
filmmakers to remain consistent with the 1982 movie, nothing much from
Morricone's music, including its general style, is resurrected in 2011.
Only a faithful reprise of the heartbeat effect at the end of "God's
Country Music" establishes a connection between the two films.
Outside of the one obvious nod to Morricone's score,
the director of 2011's
The Thing decided that he wanted to hear a
more traditional symphonic approach to the prequel score in place of
Morricone's less dynamic handling of the concept. Beltrami had already
bounced around stylistically within the franchise or remake-related
horror genre in 2011, turning in a rather tepid effort for
Scream
4 and a far more fluid and lyrically intriguing alternative for
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. His stance for
The Thing is
closer to the latter work since he was instructed to include some
melodic substance to both the female protagonist and the "thing," but
the result is not quite as cohesive in its narrative as hoped. While
there are a few synthetic embellishments in Beltrami's score, it's
mostly an exercise in unusual performance techniques for the orchestral
players. Despite the claims of two dominant themes employed, the score
really only exhibits one that receives substantial development. Its
rising three note phrases are vaguely optimistic but tempered in tone by
the loneliness of the story's location. Heard faintly on whispering
strings in "God's Country Music," the theme erupts in full ensemble mode
in "Road to Antarctica." It's a remarkably dramatic idea for this
context, reminiscent of his theme for
Terminator 3: Rise of the
Machines, repeated in full in "How Did You Know?" and referenced
several times in lesser forms in between (including a "sinking feeling"
moment with slight hints of the heartbeat effect in "Female
Persuasion"). The performance in "Road to Antarctica" is particularly
notable in its use of a striking, opening electronic pulse and
percussive heartbeat emulation that does foreshadow some of Morricone's
score. The theme develops into a separate, wholesome melody in "The
End." The remainder of the score sounds like a rather predictable
merging of Jerry Goldsmith's
Alien (the alternating woodwind
figures plainly give this inspiration away) and the unusual brass
techniques of Elliot Goldenthal. Some of the applications of the latter
in the horror bursts are quite interesting ("Meet and Greet"), though
others do resort to the normal shrieking dissonance that populates
Beltrami's less interesting contributions to the genre. The paranoia
caused by the "thing" seems most frequently handled with piercing brass
wailing, hardly original but basically effective. By "In the Ship," this
wail has become a sustained dissonant pitch that is difficult to handle
outside of context. Overall, the mass of the suspense and horror
material in the middle of
The Thing is not likely to impress, but
the album's first two and final two tracks do contain upwards of ten
minutes worthy of investigation (and securing a third star here),
including some surprising tonal beauty in the case of the latter pair.
Welcome to Beltrami's comfort zone.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.75
(in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.8
(in 19,012 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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