Benjamin Wallfisch – “Hellboy”
Album Reviews | Apr 18th, 2019
Record Label: Sony Masterworks
Genre: Film Score
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The latest attempt to bring Hellboy to the big screen is here, and this time David Harbour dons the outfit. I was a fan of the first Hellboy, not so much the second movie so I don’t really have any strong takes on it. Not sure why they passed on Ron Perlman as Hellboy though, except maybe to capitalize on David Harbour’s popularity from Stranger Things? Based on some of the movie reviews, the reboot isn’t all that great. Since I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t really tell you so I’ll review the music instead.
I was a fan of Marco Beltrami’s Hellboy score. I particularly loved the one track, “Father’s Funeral,” that sounded just amazing. This time around, composer Benjamin Wallfisch (It, Shazam!, Blade Runner 2020 with Zimmer) did the scoring duties. The style for this score is a mixture of orchestra, heavy guitars and kind of obnoxious dubstep in some tracks. The opening track “Big Red” gives me a migraine. Thankfully, the score simmers down a bit for the non-action cues and sounds like music to me. I liked the track “Grugach” and the ending of it reminded me of the score from Batman / The Dark Knight with a fury of strings.
Based on the reviews and word of the mouth, the movie doesn’t sound that great and the score is somewhat forgettable, sadly. There’s a few good tracks but overall, I was expecting something a lot better. There’s either tracks that are just too noisy for the fight scenes, or they are too quiet and ominous. The title track “Hellboy” and the opening track just aren’t good and I wish more composers would try to come up with memorable motifs. Perhaps it was Neil Marshall’s idea to not have a memorable score or not? Either way, I was hoping for something better with this.
Bottom Line: Could have been a good score but it’s not that memorable
Notable Tracks: Grugach, A New Eden, This Isn’t You
Overall Rating:
