Todd Haberman delivers an intricate score for Satanic. The movie tells the story of a group of friends on their way to a music festival in the desert. During their trip they stop off in Los Angeles to tour true-crime occult sites, only to encounter a mysterious young runaway who puts them on a terrifying path to ultimate horror...

Horror soundtracks usually come in two varieties: There's the cliched background atmospheric music cue collections and the beautiful, eerie theme based scores. Todd Haberman delivers the former here, but it's a slight cut above the standard cue-based score.

The album contains 12 tracks (29 min, 42 sec) of carefully constructed music which helps to put the fear of God in the listener. There are jumpy elements, as you'd expect, and plenty of creepy tracks designed to heighten the movie's tension. But there's also the odd reflective moment - but it's only fleeting.

I have to admit that the score did creep me out, something that hardly ever happens to me, and I don't know why or how Haberman managed to get under my skin. It's not the sort of music I'd want to listen to on my own after dark.

While it's certainly a slight cut above the usual horror score, it's still not a comfortable listen in isolation and still works best, as intended, when listened to inside the movie it was composed for, rather than a standalone project.

6

Darren Rea