April 10 2019
Christopher Young’s PET SEMATARY Soundtrack Available Digitally from Paramount – 2LP Vinyl Announced from Waxwork
– Randall D. Larson
On April 5th Paramount Music released a digital soundtrack album for PET SEMATARY, featuring the original score by Christopher Young (SPIDER-MAN 3, HELLRAISER, DRAG ME TO HELL, GHOST RIDER). Also included on the album is Starcrawler’s cover of the Ramones’ title song from the 1989 film adaptation.
The new film remakes Stephen King’s 1989 horror novel about a young family who moves to a rural home and then discovers they are living next to a creepy pet cemetery which is able to reanimate whatever is buried on its grounds. The original version is known for its powerful score by Elliot Goldenthal (ALIEN3, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, BATMAN FOREVER).
In an interview with Daniel Schweiger for the online Film Music magazine, Young was asked what he thought about Goldenthal’s original score. “I never saw the original PET SEMATARY back then,” Young admitted. “I’m a tremendous fan of Elliot Goldenthal’s music for sure, though I had never heard the PET SEMATARY score. I knew his later music…” When he was up for scoring the new version, Young began to watch the original movie, but then decided “I’m going to stop, because this is actually doing more harm than good,” allowing himself to determine his own direction on the new film’s score without any preconceived ideas that might influence him. “Every time I get up to bat on another horror movie [I] make sure that I’m trying to outdo myself,” Young said. “Whether I succeed or not, I’m not the one to say. I’ve been doing cues for horror movies for 35 years, I still get as worried with each cue as I did when I did my very first horror movie THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD [aka PRANKS]. I’m always in a state of anxiety as I ask myself ‘What can I do better?’ What can I do to improve myself?”
While Goldenthal’s score for the 1989 movie was fully orchestral, Young had been asked to score the new version electronically. “Being given the opportunity to try to continue to try to reinvent myself thru this electronic world is exciting,” he told Schwieger. “I suppose if it had been an orchestral score, my question would have been ‘Can I do it again? What can I do with the orchestra that I haven’t already done?’ The pure electronic thing in horror movies is new and exciting.”
In addition to Paramount’s digital release, a physical version is in the works on vinyl from Waxwork Records (they’ve also issued the original PET SEMATARY soundtrack as a 2-LP vinyl release – see here).
