Disturbing Behavior

The second film score from Mark Snow this past summer outside of his duties to the X-Files movie is to David Nutter's Stepford-teen movie, Disturbing Behavior. Both Nutter, a co-producer of The X-Files, and Snow, it's regular composer, are given not much of story to work with to produce something that will ultimately be only watchable and enjoyed by the Scream/I Know What You Did... crowd of moviegoers. Upon listening to this album, I'm reminded by the melody, of another rather impressive horror film, The Exorcist, of which Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" went from the benign to the terrifying. Here, Snow presents a more atmospheric work that is very similar to his television work on the X-Files. Mainly because I find when scores tend to take that route, they become trite and annoying, and for much of this album, it still remains so. There are some nice passages during the middle of the album ("Double Wide / Unplugged At Bishop Flat") but most of the score remains in the same vein. A nice addition to the album that isn't usually seen on commercial releases is the trailer music (the music used for theatre and television commercials), here written by John Beal, a luminary in the field of 30 second to two minute "buzz clips" used in these clips. It would be nice, at least, to see a trend to include such clips since they are becoming some of the most talked about and asked for music today.