Boogeyman (2005) - Soundtrack

I remember visual snippets from select moments of Boogeyman, but nothing at all of the film's storyline or characters. Those memorable snippets include an almost comically unnerving action figure (i.e. doll) in the film's opening scene, a tormented soul encased in what looked to be Saran Wrap, a nightmarish hallucination, or dream, involving the protagonist's deceased mother, and a post-credits scene, from the POV of the titular boogeyman, peeking through a cracked open door at a frightened child, who is calling for her mother because she has seen him. That's it.

Yet those snippets seemed to have left enough of an impression on me that I purchased this limited edition soundtrack album of Joseph LoDuca's score for the film, despite my having no idea or memory of what that score sounded like. Turns out that was by design.

"...the Evil Dead films [were] musically big [and] fun as hell," director Stephen Kay remarks in Daniel Schweiger's liner notes. "Yet Boogeyman was going to be very different, because we wanted to get inside [the main character's] head."

This approach resulted in a score with melodic sections woven through a soundscape of ambient dissonance that creates what Schwieger describes as a "continuous mood of tension and pending doom." 

Which is a good explanation for why this score is one I notice and appreciate in snippets, but not as a cohesive whole.

Army of Darkness (1992) - Soundtrack

Depressing as it is to admit, it was a struggle for me to make it through the one time I watched Army of Darkness. Which seems odd, because, on paper, this love letter to Ray Harryhausen movies, sword and sorcery fantasy, and Three Stooges slapstick should have worked.

I expected and wanted Army of Darkness to work, because I loved The Evil Dead, Crimewave, Evil Dead II, and Darkman. With a track record like that, how could I have any doubt abut it working?

Two things, though. First, the version of Army of Darkness I watched was a bootleg of the Director's Cut, the one with the Rip Van Winkle ending, and it just felt slow to me. The entire movie just seemed to sit there. Which felt off-putting and wrong.

Second, and this was the real deal breaker for me, is that I grew to dislike the character of Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell). How could the hapless everyman character from the first two films turn into such an unlikeable dunderhead? It got so bad that I began to root for the bad guys!

The version of the soundtrack I have is Varèse Sarabande's 2020 reissue, which is a presentation of the score as it heard in the theatrical release prints that screened in the United States.

While I might not have liked the movie all that much, Joseph LoDuca's score for it is incredible. As is the single track composed by Danny Elfman, March of the Dead. I've had so much fun listening to it, I might try giving Army of Darkness a second viewing.