With the exception of Absentia, which featured a score by Ryan David Leak, the Newton Brothers have composed the music for every Mike Flanagan project since Oculus, including his most recent television series Midnight Mass. From his films to his television anthologies, the Newton Brothers have found unique and exciting ways to help amplify Flanagan's distinct tales of terror, each requiring different musical elements.
The Newton Brothers know that at the core of any Flanagan project is emotional volatility. In order to make audiences empathize with the characters on the screen and be convinced of the horrific scenarios they go through, the score must provide a palpable and emotional basis. It's difficult to rank the scores of Flanagan's projects since they're all so well done, but it also demonstrates the growth and familiarity that has developed over the years between the creator and his musical collaborators.
10 Hush (2016) - Available On Netflix
Hush is an under-the-radar thriller but a favorite among Flanagan fans. It stars his wife and frequent collaborator Kate Siegel as Maddie, a writer who lives alone in a beautiful glass house in the woods. Everything in Maddie's life is idyllic until she becomes the target of a home invasion, and due to her deafness must rely on her other senses to thwart her attacker.
Due to the premise of the film and long stretches of silence, there's very little in the way of a true musical score, but the Newton Brothers do make effective use of ambient sounds to bring Maddie's perception of the world to life and maintain tension.
9 Absentia (2011) - Available On Prime
One of Flanagan's early works, Absentia nevertheless features a few of his trademark calling cards, including sibling bonding and a sense of pervasive horror in a communal setting. It doesn't, however, include a score by his longtime collaborators the Newton Brothers, but instead, the talents of composer Ryan David Leack.
Absentia follows a woman and her younger sister as they investigate a mysterious tunnel in connection to her husband's disappearance. Leack does an adequate job at lulling viewers into a false sense of security with melodic pianos as the siblings begin to put the pieces of the mystery together. By the end of the film, once they realize the tunnel may be a portal to unspeakable evil, Leack has ramped up his strings, his synthesizers, and his pulsing organs to a wonderfully terrifying finish.
8 Ouija: Origins Of Evil (2016) - Available On Hulu
For Ouija: Origin Of Evil, a sequel to Ouija, a movie based on the kids' game, Flanagan decided to go in a direction that focused on its primordial origins. The story begins with a widowed mother who, through her séance business, unwittingly causes a demon to possess her youngest daughter, then desperately tries to get her back.
The movie is a period piece in many ways, taking place in 1967 Los Angeles, and there are times when the Newton Brothers sprinkle in nods to the era. But for the most part, their score is otherworldly, atmospheric, and quite frankly very sad, often reflecting the regretful feelings of the mother who sacrificed her child for a quick buck.
7 Before I Wake (2016) - Available On Netflix
For Flanagan's well-received Before I Wake, the creator took a whimsical look at The Omen by way of Pan's Labyrinth, about a young boy who gets adopted by a couple still grieving the loss of their son years earlier, only to find he can conjure the dead boy (and other fantastic things) in elaborate dream sequences that go from inspiring to horrifying.
The Newton Brothers collaborated with Danny Elfman (Tim Burton's oft-used composer) for this score, and Elfman brings the same whimsical and spooky element he did for Beetlejuice to play among their steady strings and tinkling pianos. There's a fairytale essence to the movie despite its chills and thrills, and the score never loses sight of that.
6 Oculus (2013) - Available On Hulu
Widely considered Flanagan's breakout movie, Oculus incorporates staples of Flanagan's later works like sibling bonding, familial resilience, community, and personal tragedy. When two orphaned adult siblings confront a malevolent entity that might have caused the deaths of their parents, they run the risk of being ensnared by the evil itself, found in a seemingly harmless mirror.
For the first collaboration between Flanagan and the Newton Brothers, the composers layer orchestral pieces with more organic sounds, weaving a dense and vibrant sound narrative to reflect the terror onscreen. Things like dripping water suddenly become not only sinister but the basis of haunting melodies.
5 Gerald's Game (2017) - Available On Netflix
Before he took on Doctor Sleep, Flanagan adapted another one of Stephen King's stories — Gerald's Game, which focuses on a couple that goes to a remote retreat to rekindle their love life, only to have it turn into a truly harrowing nightmare for the wife once she finds herself alone and bound in the house.
The Newton Brothers teamed with Andy Grush to create a score that begins gentle, loving, and melodic, reflecting the couples' intimate passion, only to descend into chaotic wind instruments and strings once she must fight for her life in the darkness. Since much of the film focuses on her alone, unsure of what she's experiencing is real, the music is essential to making her fear feel visceral.
4 The Haunting Of Bly Manor (2020) - Available On Netflix
A sort of spiritual successor to The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor features several members of the same cast but transports the frights to '80s England, where a governess is sent to mind two young wards who are convinced their manor is haunted. The Newton Brothers consciously alter the tone to fit the magisterial abode and its funereal occupants, while also adding some unexpected delights.
Taut, frantic strings abound during Bly Manor's most shocking moments, while flourishes of soft piano emphasize its tragic romance, and music-box ministrations all combine to create an elegant, gothic soundscape that fans will find themselves streaming on a rainy day, wishing for absolution for unhappy ghosts.
3 Midnight Mass (2021) - Available On Netflix
For Midnight Mass, Flanagan's most recent project, the Newton Brothers decided to pursue an interesting amalgamation of proper composition and ...Neil Diamond songs. What seems dissonant for a slo- burn horror series that takes place in a remote island community perfectly captures the working-class spirits of the citizens who are entirely willing to believe the miracles that arrive with a mysterious new preacher.
By creating a tableau of liturgic church hymns and rock 'n' roll anthems, the Newton Brothers help to properly convey many themes found throughout the series: devotion and rebellion, subservience and analysis, life and death, faith and atheism. There's a lot of heavy topics in the series as well as a lot many fun pop culture references in Midnight Mass, but the music helps buoy them both.
2 Doctor Sleep (2019) - Available On Prime
Flanagan had large creative shoes to fill when he tackled Doctor Sleep, the sequel to not only Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining, but Stephen King's famous novel of the same name. In order to do justice to both, the Newton Brothers had to marry Flanagan's vision with his visual predecessors, as well as take up the mantle from the composer of the first film, Wendy Carlos.
With just a few trudging notes provided by a powerful horn section, Carlos created a theme based on "Dies irae, dies illa", a 500-year-old Latin hymn that was as relentless as Jack Torrance running through the Overlook Hotel with an ax. The Newton Brothers not only paid homage to Carlos' score, but incorporated elements of jazz, wailing vocals, pounding pianos, and synthesizers to create the perfect soundtrack to the psychological horrors that unfold for an adult Danny Torrance.
1 The Haunting Of Hill House (2018) - Available On Netflix
One of the most successful entries into the horror anthology genre (and many fans' first introduction to Flanagan's work), The Haunting of Hill House features a score that is equal parts foreboding, sinister, and provocative. The intricate melodies have to properly highlight a family scarred by trauma, who are forced to return to the forbidding site of childhood terror decades later to process their grief.
Ghosts come in many forms in this series, and the musical tapestry has to emphasize their psychological and physical effects on the Crains as they confront them. The stirring strings, heart-wrenching piano ballads, and sinister synths combined to make this one of the most beautifully haunting scores of any of Flanagan's works.
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