Plaza Mayor Company Ltd release Chris Roe's atmospheric and unsettling score for Charismata. The film is a psychological horror about a police detective whose sanity begins to unravel as she investigates a series of brutal ritualistic murders. As a rookie detective struggling to find acceptance in a police department defined by a culture of bullying and intolerance, things go from bad to worse when the chief suspect in a series of brutal ritualistic murders takes a personal interest in her. A game of cat and mouse ensues which sees Rebecca’s grasp on reality beginning to spiral out of control, leading to a terrifying climax where she needs to fight for her sanity, her life and maybe even her soul...

Charismata is a horror score with a difference. Yes it's full of atmospheric ambient cues, but it's incredibly unsettling. Horror scores of this sort normally leave me feeling cold, but here Chris Roe also injects the occasional beautifully melancholic theme to help make it work as a standalone album.

It's not a patch on his multi-layered and beautifully detailed score for Spitfire, but the two projects are poles apart.

The album contains 13 tracks (21 min, 35 sec) making it a bit of a short soundtrack, but if you're a fan of ambient scores there's plenty to sink your teeth into here.

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Darren Rea