Top 10 Mike Flanagan’s Horror Movie Scores
Mike Flanagan is really a force of the horror genre. His TV and movies musical scores shows prove why. Newton Brothers have serene every Mike Flanagan music on his horror projects. From his TV anthologies to his films, the Newton Brothers had discover exciting and unique ways to aid in amplifying Flanagan’s distinct story of terror, every requiring diverse musical elements.
Newton Brothers are aware that at the hub of any Flanagan movie is emotional volatility. Just in order to create viewers empathize with the casts on the big screen and become convinced of the terrible scenarios they went by, the score should give the emotional and the palpable basis. It is hard to rank Flanagan’s projects since they were all well done, however, it also demonstrated the familiarity and the growth that have developed through the years between his musical collaborators and the maker.
10. Hush (2016)
The movie is one below-the-radar thriller; however, it is one of the favorite among the Flanagan movies. It stars Flanagan’s wife and recurrent collaborator Kate as Maddie, the writer that dwells alone in an adorable glass house inside the forest. Everything in the life of Maddie is idyllic until that she became the target of the home invasion, and because of her deafness should depend on her other sense to thwart the attacker.
9. Absentia (2011)
One of the early works of Flanagan is Absentia. Nevertheless, it features some of his brand calling cards, with sibling bonding and the sense of pervasive terror in a communal setting.
Absentia followed the woman and her little sibling as they investigated the mysterious tunnel in link to the disappearance of her husband. Leack does a sufficient job at lulling the viewers into the false sense of safety with melodic piano as the siblings start to place the pieces of a mystery together. At the finale, once they realized the tunnel can be the portal to unspeakable devil, Leack had ramped up the strings, his pulsing organs and his synthesizers and to the wonderfully horrifying finale.
8. Ouija: Origins Of Evil (2016)
This movie is a sequel to the first one and a film based on the children’s game. Flanagan chose to go in the direction that concentrates on its primordial start. The story starts with a widow mother who, by her séance business, innocently caused the demon to possess the youngest daughter, desperately trying to win her back.
The film is a time piece, taking place in LA in 1967. For the major part, the score is otherworldly, quite frankly really sad, atmospheric, and usually reflecting the regretful feeling of a mother that sacrificed her kid for that quick cash.
7. Before I Wake (2016)
The maker took the whimsical look of The Omen, about the young boy that gets adopted by the couple who are still grieving with the passing of their son after years, only to discover he can conjure this dead boy in elaborated dream sequences that went from inspiring to terrifying.
Elfman brings the similar spooky and whimsical element to play among the steady strings and the tinkling pianos. There was the fairytale essence to this film despite its thrills and chills, and its score did not lose sight of it.
6. Oculus (2013)
Oculus incorporated staples of the later works of Flanagan like sibling bonding, personal tragedy, familial resilience, and community. When the two orphaned matured siblings confronted the malevolent entity which might have the reason of the passing of their parents, then, they run the danger of being ensnared through the evil itself, located in the seemingly harmless mirror.
On the initial collaboration between the Newton Brothers and Flanagan, the composers layered orchestral pieces with more organic sounds, vibrant sound story to reflect the horror onscreen and weaving a dense. Things such as dripping water then become not only threatening but the foundation of haunting melody.
5. Gerald’s Game (2017)
The movie concentrates on the couple that went to the remote retreat to renew their love life, and just to have it turned to a really harrowing nightmare for his wife the moment she locates only herself and bound inside the house.
Newton Brothers unite with Andy Grush in making the score that starts melodic, gentle, and loving, reflecting the intimate passion of the couple, only to descend to chaotic wind strings and instruments once she must combat for her existence in the dark. Since much of this movie concentrates on her being alone, not sure of what she was experiencing was real, the music has been important to make her fear feel primitive.
4. The Haunting Of Bly Manor (2020)
This movie features some of the members of the similar cast but transported the frights to 1980s England, where the governess was sent to mind the two younger wards that convinced their manor was haunted. Newton Brothers willfully change the tone to match with the magisterial abode plus the funereal occupants, whereas also adding some of the unexpected delights.
Frantic, taut, strings abound during the most shocking moments, also flourishes of the soft piano emphasized the music-box ministrations and the tragic romance, and all combined to make that gothic, elegant soundscape that fans can find themselves streaming over the rainy day, wishes for the absolution for the not so happy ghosts.
3. Midnight Mass (2021)
Newton Brothers chose to pursue a really interesting amalgamation of a proper composition. What appears dissonant for a slow-burn terror series that happens in the remote isle community perfectly captured the working-class spirit of a citizen who are totally willing to believe a miracle that arrived with the odd new preacher.
By making the tableau of liturgic holy place hymns and the rock ‘n’ roll anthem, Newton Brothers help in properly conveying many themes found all throughout the series: subservience and analysis, devotion and rebellion, faith and atheism and life and death. There are lots of heavy topics within the series and also lots of many funny pop culture references at the Midnight Mass, however, the music aids buoy them mutually.
2. Doctor Sleep (2019)
Mike Flanagan had bigger creative shoes that needs to fill when he deal with Doctor Sleep. In order to make some justice to both, Newton Brothers need to marry with Flanagan’s vision about his visual predecessors, and also take up a mantle from a composer of its initial movie, Wendy Carlos.
And with just some trudging notes given by the powerful horn phase, Carlos make the theme based on the “Dies irae, died illa”, the 500-year-old hymn of Latin that had been as relentless as the Jack Torrance running by an Overlook Hotel with the ax. Newton Brothers did not only paid the homage to score Carlos’, but incorporated jazz elements, wailing vocals, synthesizers and pounding pianos to create an ideal soundtrack to a psychological horror that unfold Danny Torrance, the adult one.
1. The Haunting Of Hill House (2018)
This is considered as one of the most winning entry into the genre of horror anthology genre. It features the score that is the mutual parts foreboding, provocative and sinister. The intricate melodies needed to highlight properly a family scarred through trauma, that were forced to come back to the forbidding sites of their childhood horror decades later to proceed to their grief.
Ghosts came in lots of forms in this sequence, and the melodic tapestry had to emphasize the physical and psychological effects over the Crains when they confronted them. The heart-wrenching piano ballad, the stirring strings, and the sinister synths blend to make it as one of its most beautifully haunting score from the many works of Mike Flanagan.
