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How appropriate that this score should follow the Hitchcock albums above
for Jerry Goldsmith quotes appropriately from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo
score, for this new horror film. The swirling figures you hear right at the
beginning of Herrmann’s score to suggest giddiness and morbid fear of
heights is appropriated by Goldsmith to underscore ‘The Carousel’
and ‘Return to the Carousel’ cues on this new album. In the latter
they are further heightened to give the impression of a grotesque demonic
ride.
This is a powerful Gothic score that, no doubt, emphasises the shock/fright
quota of the film. (The stills from the film showing the shadowy house with
its dark halls full of menacing statues; and the girl trapped in her bed
in a thicket of vine-like lances indicates what to expect!). Goldsmith as
usual impresses with much more than the tired ghost-film-music clichés.
There are sour, echoing, remote off-key figures, slitherings, sudden thumpings
and shudderings, and bird-like chirpings from a huge array of acoustical
instruments suggesting a plethora of hidden menaces about to pounce. One
particular effect sounds like a series of submarine sonar pings. This might
work in the film but it sounds vaguely hilarious on the CD. I would mention
the ‘Picture Album’ cue which opens with a tense, foreboding with
small bells and xylophone/glockenspiel over low bass dronings. Goldsmith
then cleverly uses dynamics and the whole sound stage to manipulate the audience,
heightening their apprehension as threats appear to emanate from all different
directions separately or in varying configurations. For relief there is the
quieter more reflective ‘A Place for Everything’. This is hesitant
music of some charm but its tranquillity is soon broken by cold, strange
ominous figures and those sonar pings. There seems to be a potentially wonderful
theme in this score that is never able to free itself from the surrounding
darkness to reveal its glory.
After a tremendously chilling climax that is manifested in ‘Finally
Home’ there is the valedictory cue ‘Home Safe.’ Beginning
as a hollow-sounding, desolate cry of immeasurable and inconsolable loss,
the music slowly transforms and warms so that we hear the carousel associated
with laughter and childhood innocence. There is also another reference to
the Vertigo score – this time the Scene d’Amour. The music ends
with a heavy sigh.
Reviewer
Ian Lace
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Reviewer
Ian Lace
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OST
