Needful Things

Patrick Doyle makes is mark in the annals of scoring for the Devil and in such illustrious company as Jerry Goldsmith's superlative score for the Omen as well as James Newton Howard's score for The Devil's Advocate. While Needful Things wasn't such a high profile film as those two, the score, as one would expect from Doyle, is exceptionally good. Perhaps the best part would be expert choral opening which is thundering setting of the words to the Requiem Mass and makes superb use of the natural rhythm of the words which adds momentum as well as being very clever. Much of the rest of the score contains hints of the choral work and not until the end does the choir return with a vengeance.

A lot of the quiet, but sombre music sounds much like something Bernard Herrmann would have written, Vertigo perhaps. There is a lovely lullaby waltz theme that appears several times and gives some of the score a little of the poignancy it requires to offset the more demonic aspects. There are even a few more fun moments, indeed, Art & The Minister uses the choir in a very classical sounding, but amusing moment. It effectively by slowly moving into lighter territory from the more sombre choir into the more joyful tone that lightens the tone without making it sound at odds with the rest of the score. One of the best things about the score is what it doesn't have, and that is a lack of horrible orchestral outbursts for some particularly horrific moment. Perhaps the fact that the film itself wasn't really frightening in the least has something to do with it. The only real scare occurs in Nettie Finds Her Dog and this is reflected in the score with a brassy outburst.

The two classical tracks included are actually very well picked indeed. Hall of the Mountain King is fairly similar to the style that Doyle has adopted for the choral moments. This isn't glaring similarity, but it does contain the outrageously exciting choir of the opening titles and so compliments the rest very well. Ave Maria does rather change the style of the music too much to fit in quite as well, but it does feature in the film with a fairly high profile so its inclusion as a more heavenly offset to the devilish parts is quite reasonable.

Certainly a score for all Doyle fans as well as horror score fans, in fact I can't really recommend it enough as it is hugely entertaining and Varese have actually produced a very sensible length album that contains pretty much everything from the film, the other tracks were often very similar to ones that had already appeared so the score is perfectly arranged and produced. It even contains a few notes from the director and the composer.