When I think about successful relationships between a director and a composer that have resulted in truly excellent scores, M. Night Shyamalan comes to mind with the brilliant scores by James Newton Howard. Their last movie together was After Earth, about a father and his child, which was released more than ten years ago. Since that time, the children of M. Night Shyamalan have become adults as well, and one of his daughters, Ishana Night Shyamalan, had her first director’s debut with the movie The Watchers.
Like her father’s movies, there is an interesting story to be told in The Watchers, with a lot of mystery involved, horrific moments and things that are not always what they seem. Such a movie needs a score that fits that kind of story very well, and Ishana chose wisely by giving that assignment to Abel Korzeniowski. Korzeniowski is an experienced composer for horror, as he has shown with his music for The Nun and the TV show Penny Dreadful, and his approach to horror is unique and beautiful at the same time. In the music for The Watchers, you can hear unnerving sounds for the dark moments in the movie, and these sounds are always in the lower registers of the music, as can be heard, for example, in “Point of No Return” or “Birds Are Gone.” What I love about Korzeniowski’s music, in contrast to those darker sounds, is that he is able to create the most gorgeous melodies for every movie genre, as is the case again with The Watchers. My favorite tracks are “The Dying Gods,” “Metamorphosis” and “A Little Girl, Sometimes,” with their music gorgeously performed by the string section of the orchestra or the piano.
I have said it before, and it is worth repeating. I consider Abel Korzeniowski one of the best composers in the field of film music. His melodic writing is out of this world, where every note is performed with the utmost care to get the most emotion out of each of them. Hopefully, Ishana will become just as successful as her father and wants to keep collaborating with the same composer for multiple movies as well, because I wouldn’t mind hearing more of Korzeniowski’s music.
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Tracklist
The highlights are in bold.
- The Dying Gods (2:02)
- Point of No Return (3:23)
- Into the Woods (3:04)
- Welcome to the Show (2:40)
- Stachys Sylvatica (3:18)
- The Burrow (3:03)
- What Book Am I Reading? (4:00)
- January (3:25)
- Tree Hiders (3:04)
- The Door in the Floor (3:23)
- Escape (5:06)
- It’s Not Him (2:43)
- I Wanna Be Like Lucy (1:52)
- Mural (3:28)
- The Woman in the Photos (2:22)
- Birds Are Gone (4:47)
- Metamorphosis (2:16)
- A Little Girl, Sometimes (2:45)
Total length: 56 minutes
WaterTower Music (2024)
