Soundtrack Review: The Eye (2008)

Posted by Jorn Tillnes

February 23, 2008

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The Eye, marco beltrami

This is a review of the motion picture score for The Eye by Marco Beltrami. Release date: Unknown.

Tomorrow is of course the Academy Award and Marco Beltrami is nominated for Best Score with 3:10 to Yuma. February 1^st this year The Eye had its premiere, and it wasn’t too successful. It is a remake of a Hong Kong film called “Jian Gui”, and sits comfortably in the horror genre. As I’ve mentioned before, horror scores is probably the hardest to review, because I listen to them outside of the movie and this is what my reviews are based on. It can fit perfectly in the movie, but sound terrible outside of it. Usually there are two types of horror scores, the “crazy” one, where it sounds like random noise and the “ambient” one in which it is more creepy background noise and of course anywhere in between. I’ve reviewed one horror score so far this year, and it was The Mist by Mark Isham, so I will draw some comparisons along the way. Here is the track list for The Eye:

The Eye Main Titles
Bruja
Rain
Not My Eyes
To See Again
Apartment On Fire
Taking Mrs. Hillman
Road To Mexico
He Is Dead
Bedridden
Report Card
Who Is She?
Mirror Mirror
Mrs. Martinez
Walkthrough
Retribution
The Drive Home
Roadblock
The Concert

A solid number of songs and the total playtime is 47:01 which is very respectable. So does this score fall into the “crazy” category or the “ambient” category? I would say that this is a fine mix between the two while The Mist was definitively in the “ambient” category. Marco Beltrami has done a few horror scores before like Captivity, The Omen and Cursed. Neither of those scores impressed me, but perhaps there is something new to add to the horror genre and Marco Beltrami could be the man to do it. It starts of in a typical horror fashion, a little crazy mixed with ambient scary sounds, but it dares to step outside of the horror circle quite a few times which is refreshing to say the least. There are a few nice string based themes in there and the creepy piano sends the occasional shiver down your spine.

It is a solid horror score that actually gave me goosebumps while listening to it and the movie definitively benefited from it. If only this score was used on a really good horror movie, then it all would have come together nicely. The film studio certainly did the right thing in hiring Marco Beltrami for this. You can really feel the amount of work and pride he has put into this score. Is it wasted? I don’t think so. Even though I am huge Mark Isham fan, I have to admit that this is an improvement upon The Mist which I reviewed earlier. The huge variety in this score is really surprising. I think this is Marco Beltrami at his best, and I really want to put it in my MP3 player, but I would be too scared walking to work in the morning. Listen to The Eye below: