Back Lot Music release Reza Safinia's haunting score to Mercy. Based on a short story by Stephen King, Mercy tells the tale of two young boys who move with their mother to take care of their dying grandmother at her decrepit farmhouse. When they suspect that the elderly woman they love has encountered a dark spirit, they fear she might not be the only one who won’t make it through the summer alive. Once George and Buddy McCoy arrive at their Gramma Mercy’s, what they find inside her 150-year-old home is nothing short of terrifying. As the brothers experience deeply disturbing phenomena they believe to be the work of an ancient witch, they must fight for their lives and overcome the evil forces threatening their family...

Reza Safinia's score for Mercy sounds like your cliched, run-of-the-mill horror score. It's packed full of atmospheric noise and jumpy moments... but there's nothing here you won't have heard a million times before.

Scores like this are hard to review, because for what they were intended for, you can guarantee that it ups the atmosphere in the movie... but as a reviewer I'm supposed to listen to it as it's presented: as a score to enjoy in isolation, outside of its original purpose. Sadly, on that front this makes for a rather dull listening experience. Of this score's 22 tracks (41 min, 28 sec) there wasn't anything I'd really be interested in listening to again.

While I'm sure it works incredibly well in the movie, on its own merits it just left me cold.

3

Darren Rea