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Reviews are out. Notices for Elfman are largely positive.
A second critically well-received movie in a row. The 2016-2021 period of Elfman almost exclusively scoring panned movies is well and truly over.
A Superior Court judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by an unnamed woman and her former attorney to dismiss a wrongful prosecution lawsuit filed against them by famed composer Danny Elfman.
Evidence presented by Elfman, Superior Court Judge Mark Young wrote, showed that the woman’s law firm, Jeff Anderson & Associates, had “initiated the suit with malice,” having “lacked probably cause.”
“Plaintiffs put forth evidence that Anderson defendants’ true objective was to bolster their own reputations at Elfman’s expense and attracting new clients,” Young wrote, citing a number of news articles that were timed to go online when the complaint was filed, indicating that draft complaints had been provided to the reporters. One of the articles was then posted on Anderson’s website, along with an invitation for a “free consultation.”
So excited for another Raimi film.
Really not sure what the score’s going to sound like, which makes it all even more exciting. Maybe Red Dragon strings with some tribal percussion.
It was always a bummer to me that Elfman hadn’t scored a horror movie for Raimi, so I’m really happy we can check that off.
Elfman’s made a post about this on his social media accounts. Some photos of him and Van Sant during recording. It looks like it was recorded remotely at Budapest. Looks like a small string orchestra.
Hopefully we get a release on Friday when the movie’s release goes wide.
The blu-ray featurette is that 90 second one that’s already online.
In a separate interview, Besson says that Elfman turned down three Dracula movies before this one.
We need premiere (official) releases for Woman in the Window and Family Man.
There’s lots of unreleased material for To Die For (though that’s Varese and I’m not sure there’s an audience for it). A Simple Plan would probably top my list. Lots of interesting music was left off that release.
Interesting. I’d assumed that the cello concerto would be paired with the-still-unrecorded suite for chamber orchestra. I’m guessing that with Capuçon being a big name, they wanted to capitalise on that a bit.
This was recorded yesterday at Henry Wood Hall. It was conducted by Lionel Bringuier and performed by the BBC Philharmonic.
This movie was insane. I kind of appreciated the swings, even if a lot of them didn’t land.
The album represents the score well. ‘Blessings’ has about a dozen microedits. The score is well mixed in the movie. The above cue is probably the most substantial unreleased one.
Clip from the film with unreleased score.
I haven’t seen the film, but it seems like the album is missing a lot of action material.
I was watching an interview with Van Sant earlier and he said that he was listening to a lot of Jerry Goldsmith when working on this and it influenced the score.
https://www.dekmag.com/lounge/2025/29/09/dannyelfman
Elfman acknowledges his good fortune in having long-term working relationships with such inventive directors as Tim Burton, Gus Van Sant and Sam Raimi. “It was a fun year working with all three of them back-to-back,” he notes, having scored Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire either side of his work on Besson’s Dracula; now he is about to start recording the soundtrack for his latest collaboration with Raimi, Send Help, which will be released early next year. He describes the plot as “whacked. I don’t know what to say about it! It’s about this power dynamic on a desert island, shifting between these two people, and it gets more and more crazy until – I don’t want to give away too much – things get pretty out of control.”
Both Dracula: A Love Tale and Send Help have given Elfman the chance to work on a genre for which he feels a particular affinity – “It’s a little frustrating for me that, even though I was a horror kid and grew up on horror and it’s defined my entire life, I’ve done so few horror films” – whereas many of his previous collaborations with Raimi have been on superhero films such as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. “I love working with Sam,” Elfman says. “He’s the funniest, nicest guy on the planet. So when we do a session, it would probably take me an hour to an hour and a half to present all the music I’m going to have, but we’ll probably sit there for three because Sam is going to be telling jokes and entertaining – he’s one of the most fun people ever to work with.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-5VR6-d0ho
He says near the start of this that he’s been recording it remotely in Sydney.
Elfman said he’s ‘in the middle’ of scoring this last night in this interview.
I think I can confidently say now that this is my favourite Elfman score in quite some time. I was underwhelmed when I heard it at first. I thought the music box thing was tired (it’s a part of the movie, so that’s not really on Elfman) and I thought the Kilar influences were too on-the-nose for a Dracula movie (at least Wolfman is one step removed).
But I’m really smitten with it now. The dark stuff is more interesting and more listenable than in Elfman’s other horror scores. The interplay between all the themes, as is usually the case with Elfman, is a joy. The Dracula theme emerging from the love theme helps keep the narrative tight, but the different guises of the love theme make sure it stays fresh. I want to see the movie if only to see if there’s a narrative choice for why each version plays where it does.
More than anything, I enjoy how paired down it is – I find myself really moved when the piano solos hit in the last two tracks.
I can feel that Elfman was really inspired here.
Reviews are very solid. Not glowing but consistently full of praise.
Most reviews mention that there’s a lot of needle drops. Every other review or so mentions Elfman. The score has been described as ‘jaunty,’ ‘jazzy,’ ‘period’ and many mention that it helps keep the tension going. Sounds like it’s an eclectic score, as is often the case when it comes to Van Sant’s films.
The big climatic moment of the season is scored with…Elfman’s prologue from Dark Shadows. It superficially catches the action on screen, but Bacon had a well-established theme for the character, so it’s quite jarring musically.
Between this, Carrie’s theme appearing in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a fair few tracks from Beetlejuice seemingly tracked (albeit rerecorded) into that sequel, it seems that Burton’s temp-track love is strong right now. I wonder if the editor change is responsible.
Wednesday and Dark Universe were both recorded with the same orchestra, make plenty of use of electronic sounds and have (mostly) the same crews. But those sound crisp and this does not. It’s very weird. It’s a shame because the score is really interesting and lovely.
Chris Bacon worked on this, too. Here are the composer credits.
1. Dark Universe Fanfare – Elfman
2. Monstertreffen – Elfman
3. Open the Doors – Elfman
4. Victoria’s Monster – Elfman
5. Experimental Trials – Elfman
6. Pretorius Scientific Oddities – Elfman
7. Henry’s Legacy – Elfman
8. Frankenstein’s Manor – Elfman/Bacon
9. Monsters Unchained – Elfman
10. The Burning Blade – Elfman/Bacon
11. The Curse of the Werewolf – Elfman/Bacon
12. Enter the Guild of Mystics – Elfman
13. Darkmoor by Night – Elfman
14. Das Stakehaus – Elfman/Bacon
15. Nothing Stays Buried in Darkmoor – Elfman
16. Darkmoor by Day – Elfman/BaconComing next year.
