The Faculty - Original Score

For the 1998 Miramax horror film The Faculty, composer Marco Beltrami pulled out all the stops to deliver a scary, exciting and sometimes reflective score. The score features orchestral chaos and cacophony, strange whisperings and explosive action, as well as some moments of beauty. Hypnotic, Bernard Herrmann-like suspense cues appear, as well as a melancholy, a reflective theme for the bullied main character. At the core is a defiant students-strike-back theme, first brought in somewhat romantically, then later fully unfurled in larger form. A laid-back but determined anthem growls on electric guitar, then more gently on acoustic, over a slow-jam rock groove which pulses all through the score. Beltrami only had a few moments in between all of the mayhem to break out this theme, which reprises with heroic relief in the climactic action sequence, so he extended and developed it as a stunning concert piece for the end credits.

For this release, Buck Sanders and Scott Williams pulled together the program from the original session masters recorded at Skywalker Sound in crisp, detailed sound quality. The 2-CD set features the 88-minute score plus a couple of extras.