Based on the 1973 made-for-TV movie,
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
stars
Guy Pearce
and
Katie Holmes
as
architect
Alex Hurst and his new
girlfriend Kim. The two are working on restoring the Gothic Blackwood Manor to
its original beauty. Alex’s daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison) is along for the
ride. Neglected by her mother and pushed aside by her father’s work, Sally
begins to explore the manor and unwittingly unleashes horrific entities that
threaten the lives of all of the manor’s inhabitants.
The musical score of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was created
by
Marco Beltrami
and
Buck Sanders. Beltrami’s interest in
musical composition
began at the age of six when he re-wrote piano pieces he was supposed to be
practicing. From there he decided to expand his musical knowledge, attending
the Yale School of Music, traveling to
Venice
to study music composition under
Luigi Nono
and taking a fellowship with Award-winning composer
Jerry Goldsmith.
Since then, Marco Beltrami has worked on a number of film scores, including
those for
Scream,
Resident Evil,
3:10 to Yuma, and
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Buck Sanders was always interested in music, playing guitar in local
rock bands until a stint at a local video store turned him on to musical
scoring. Upon becoming Marco Beltrami’s assistant in 1997, Sanders began
producing an co-composing a number of works with Beltrami, including the musical
scores of
Max Payne and
The Hurt Locker.
For the score of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Beltrami and
Sanders had a great deal of input from the Producer
Guillermo del Toro
and
Director
Troy Nixey. Having great respect for the original film, the producer
and director had a specific sound in mind. According to Marco Beltrami, “The
score began with Guillermo del Toro's request for a lullaby for Sally. He and
Troy Nixey also asked that we take inspiration from not only the original film's
score by
Billy Goldenberg
but also the classic 60's and 70's horror
scores of Jerry Goldsmith, Krzysztof Komeda
and
Bernard Herrmann.” The
composers found these requests to be “refreshing challenges compared
to today's current horror sound.”
The result is a soundtrack that takes things back a bit. Unlike the
horror soundtracks of today, the musical score of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
relies less on electronic effects and more on manipulation of woodwinds,
harps and
viborphones
to create the desired horror infusion. The
lullaby
del
Toro requested appears first in
Lamb Lamp Lambency
and features an
innocent sounding child’s song played on a vibrophone that becomes ominously
distorted in the end. This lulling into a sense of security and then offering
up some signs of horror is used throughout the soundtrack.
Although somewhat melancholy, the score of Don’t Be Afraid of the
Dark contains moments of beauty as in the tracks
Gramophone Lullaby,
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Main Titles
and
Garden Music. I found
myself smiling at the moments that made me jump in my seat - those moments of
security interrupted by hits of horror. One such track,
Gardener Gets Snipped
features a homage to the
Psycho shower scene. Another track,
Bed Bugs, spooked me so bad, I had to laugh at myself. Things were
rather ominous, but quiet, when out of the blue, WHAM - a loud attack of music
signifying a horrific moment in the movie made me jump.
The Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Soundtrack does exactly what
any musical score should do - it sets up the scary moments of the film and
enhances them. The music is actually quite beautiful at times making this a
nice stand alone album. What’s more important is that this is somewhat of a
throwback score in that it pays homage to older horror film scores by not trying
to over-synthesize the sound or add tons of electronic noises to elicit the
feelings of spookiness and horror. The score may be a bit old-fashioned in that
aspect, but I found it refreshing in a day when many of the horror film
soundtracks out there seem to sound so similar to one another. The Don’t Be
Afraid of the Dark Soundtrack is a refreshing change of pace from the norm
and represents a job well done by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.
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