by Dylan on 7/22/2004
 
Hellraiser: Bloodline is the fourth in the long series of horror films. I must admit I'm not a fan of the series, but this film was on TV a month or so ago, and being bored, I watched some of it. Not a good film, but what struck me was the quality of the music. Going in, I expected a lot of synth banging to accompany the bad horror, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was a good orchestral score reminiscent of the quiet moments in Christopher Young's Hellraiser scores (for my money, Young's two Hellraiser efforts are two of the greatest scores ever written). For this film, Daniel Licht was brought on board to score, along with master conductor Pete Anthony and the Northwest Sinfonia and Chorus. What results isn't even close to a great score, but it is good.

Licht introduces to the series a new theme in several variations, it very much recalls Young's superior work. When we first hear it, it sounds very epic in feel without being heroic or booming. Later in the score this theme morphs into a very pretty variation, written for the scenes that accompany the character Angelique. The orchestration for this theme's more softer moments seems dead-on similar to Hellraiser II's most beautiful track "Something to Think About," but vastly inferior. In track nine, there is a very nice gothic arrangement of this theme for strings, which briefly keeps our minds away from Young's superior efforts. However, with that said, this album has some unexpected cameo appearences of Young's Hellraiser II theme (Young is fully credited on the album), which appears in three tracks, all pretty much reorchestrated from the "Second Sight Seance" cue from the second one, and it's interesting to hear them performed with this orchestra (and combined with Licht's themes). The performance isn't as good, but it's also very different, and combined with Licht's new theme, not bad at all.

As a whole, this score is a mixed effort. Licht did the best job he possibly could've, and it's great that he had an orchestra, but his music sadly seldom rises above the level of modern television scoring. The performance, I believe, had a lot to do with that, despite having a symphony orchestra and Pete Anthony involved (the scope of Young's Hungarian orchestra is missed here). Other times there was some percussion I wasn't too crazy about, that seemed almost like something from Media Ventures (though it must have seemed more original at the time).

Overall, not a great score by any stretch of the imagination, but a fun and unexpectedly decent effort for fans of Young's Hellraiser work. I plan to look into Licht more in the future.