20. Brian McOmber – “It Comes At Night”
The word dreadful obviously has negative connotations, but in its truest sense — full of dread — it’s a compliment for a horror movie. And no horror movie was as full of dread as “It Comes At Night” this year — a bleak, ominous feeling that smothers you over the course of a couple of hours. And while much of the credit for that goes to Trey Edward Shults’ direction, the film simply wouldn’t be the same without its terrific score by Brian McOmber. A former member of Dirty Projectors (some former collaborators like Angel Deradoorian and TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone play on here too) , McOmber’s moved into composing in the last few years with movies like “A Teacher” and Shults’ breakthrough feature “Krisha,” but his work here is the best he’s done to date. In part, it’s because it’s so strikingly different from the Carpenter-ish synths that have defined horror scores in recent years: there’s electronics, sure (pin-prick throbs, gut-rumbling bassy sounds), but sitting alongside folksy instrumentation and even a classical vibe. It builds towards a quality that’s rare even for this genre: it’s a truly nightmarish score.
19. Jed Kurzel – “Alien: Covenant”
Some directors form career-long bonds with composers that stretch over entire careers, and which become intrinsic parts of their work — it’s hard to imagine Steven Spielberg’s career without John Williams, or Christopher Nolan without Hans Zimmer. Ridley Scott is not one of those composers — he’s worked with a wide range of musicians across his career, only occasionally hiring someone a second time, and his last five movies have had four different composers. But we have to say, we hope Jed Kurzel (brother of “Macbeth” director Justin, and composer of his movies and “The Babadook”) gets a second shot, because his score for Scott’s “Alien: Covenant” was pretty much the best thing about the film, even including the homoerotic double Fassbender flute bit. Containing echoes of Jerry Goldsmith’s classic “Alien” theme but very much doing its own thing, with eerie, otherworldly sounds that feels like they’ve been dug up from a distant, ancient planet, while very much bringing the thunder for the set piece sequences, it’s one of the most layered and interesting blockbuster scores we’ve heard in a long while. Next up for Kurzel: Cannes refugee superhero movie “Jupiter’s Moon”
18. Michael Abels – “Get Out”
It would have been easy, as a first-time director who’d already made a name for himself doing other things, for Jordan Peele to bring in big names to work on his first feature. But one of the many things that’s so impressive about “Get Out” is how Peele had the confidence to pick collaborators who were often as new to filmmaking as he was, and how well it paid off. For instance, composer Michael Abels, who’d composed for symphonies, opera and even gospel, but never for film before. Peele was inspired to pick up the phone by Abels’ composition “Urban Legends,” saying that he wanted him “to create something that felt like it lived in this absence of hope but still had black roots,” and the gamble was a huge success. Abels’ score is immediately evocative of classic suspense scores by the likes of Bernard Hermann and Krzysztof Komeda, discombobulating and unsettling you even before things start to go wrong for our hero. But it also uses chanting and singing in Swahili (saying words that turn out to translate as things like “Brother, run! Listen to the elders! Listen to the truth!”), and a percussive feel that lend it not just a very different feel to most work in the genre, but also real value in the story too.
17. “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2”
It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of music to “Guardians Of The Galaxy.” On paper, it was a gonzo gamble, the film destined to be known as ‘the one with a raccoon and a tree.’ But from the minute that “Hooked On A Feeling” kicked in during the first trailer, it was clear that the 70s/80s MOR soundtrack assembled by director James Gunn would do so much to ground and humanize its weirdo cast. The list of tracks for the sequel (named after a mixtape, if you were still in doubt as to how crucial the soundtrack is to the movie) might not have that same giddy sense of invention, but it’s arguably a stronger line up of songs than the original. Some famous tracks are dropped, but given a fresh spin (we might never forgive Gunn for cutting away before Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” really kicks in, but it at least suggests it wasn’t being used cheaply), and there’s more unexpected choices that work beautifully too, like a surprisingly emotional George Harrison cut, and even the crucial plot use of Looking Glass’ borderline novelty song “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl).” All that and Parliament too. Bring on Volume 3, at least soundtrack wise.
16. Michael Giacchino – “Coco”
It’s not quite at the point where you could call him Pixar’s composer in residence (he’s only done two of their last five), but we’d argue that many of the animation studio’s most memorable scores have come from Michael Giacchino, the man behind the music for “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Inside Out” (even his “Cars 2” score is great fun). He reunited with the company this year for “Coco,” and one of the most reliable hands in the business has knocked it out of the park once again. Lee Unkrich’s film is the closest thing that Pixar have made to a musical so far (with some good songs including a main theme by the writers of “Let It Go”), but Giacchino’s score is the real heart of the movie sonically speaking, evoking the film’s Mexican setting but never cheaply: it feels steeped in traditional folk music from the country while also maintaining the composer’s trademark playfulness. And despite the darkness of the movie’s setting — the Land of the Dead — the light touch is crucial in striking what turned out to be the exact perfect tone for the movie.
