by jonrichey14 on 10/25/2004
favorite track: 2
 
I have one word to describe Horner's truly original sound: eerie. This is about the most eerie soundtrack, one where the main theme isn't quite as easy to discover as one might expect it to be given that this is a James Horner score. Actually, the only resemblance this has to his other scores is a somewhat familiar Horner piano style. Everything else, including the actual piano theme/motif which Horner created solely for this film, has never been heard before.

This is truly a work of original art composed almost entirely with synthesizers. The main theme dominates the first and last tracks, but appears scarcely throughout the rest. There isn't very much discernable thematic material otherwise. It sounds like it was mostly just the improvisations of James Horner on synths, with a little piano thrown in, which I must say is the most beautiful part of the music presented here. Tracks like "Containment of a Darker Purpose" and "The Experiment on Innocence" present in fact the most unique music ever written by the composer, including some very loud and interesting action cues and cues of melancholy, while other songs like "Children, The Unbroken Bond" bring out Horner's softer side. As unique as each track is, once you've started listening to the CD, it's hard not to notice the similarity to itself in its entirety. That is its only flaw. While Horner's original stylings are unique compared with the music of his others soundtracks, each one sounds almost exactly the same, and his theme(s) doesn't really go anywhere, which is quite unusual for Horner. In fact, it's quite possible that the first and last tracks are exactly the same track duplicated.

All in all, although this is unique and at times lush and beautiful (rarely ever), I pray that Horner doesn't do another soundtrack like this, because his darker side is far less dazzling than his romantic and action styles.