Few composers specializing in horror’s queasier offerings have the unearthly ability to truly get under the skin like Canada’s Mark Korven. Making his scoring debut with the 1987’s delightfully quirky cult comedy “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” almost seems like an aberration given the grotesque mermaid he’d later end up scoring as one of the apparitions besetting the keepers of “The Lighthouse” its blaring, sound mass “music” the stuff of Lovecraftian nightmares. But it would be in a killer, futuristic no-exit cell of 1997’s “Cube” where Korven made his first big genre impression with a chilling synth score that created a vision of the outside punishing future society in the mind’s eye. Korven the impressively teamed with filmmaker Robert Eggers to create the spine-shredding, uncannily cackling score for “The Witch” claiming a Puritanical outcast family one by one, with the resulting acclaim making sure he’d enter “The Lighthouse” with Eggers. Korven has continued on his uniquely disturbing way, whether through the killer tones of “The Black Phone,” exploring “Resident Evil’s” Raccoon City and hearing the soul-seizing spirit waiting for whomever takes a “Night Swim.”
Now with “The First Omen,” Korven takes on a particularly unforgiving franchise, whose sequels seemed doomed to never capture the satanically psychological dark magic of the original that netted Jerry Goldsmith his only Oscar for Best Score, and a nomination for the unholy song “Ave Satani.” With Goldsmith scoring the next two films, it’s been a high bar of scoring Rube-Goldberg styled deaths that Marco Beltrami and Jonathan Sheffer have had to dive into.
One of the most shocking things about “The First Omen” is that it’s the most daring and successful “Omen” since the original. It’s a prequel directed with visually atmospheric and suspensefully ghastly effectiveness by Arkasha Stevenson, who last threw a woman down a witchy wormhole for Netflix’s “Brand New Cherry Flavor.” Now the victim is the appealingly innocent nun-to-be Margaret (Neil Tiger Free), who arrives in Rome with the best of intentions, even if she has a taste for sampling life before taking her orders. But she’ll soon discover a distinctly twisted convent holding women under horrific lock and key, all with the kind of devilish goal in mind that Rosemary Woodhouse knew all too well.
While Stevenson and Korven could have delivered a very similar Antichrist, both artists go out of their way to create a truly disturbing film that’s its own unholy infant. And perhaps that’s no more daring than on Korven’s part, who takes the Latin-inspired musical idea of Goldsmith’s unequallable score and goes his own, distinct way with it. Sure, you get the black mass chorus (and of course the Big Theme), but here it’s uniquely scary, skin-crawling stuff. Choruses moan and cackle, a horn blares, and the orchestra veers between the melodic and the dissonant to create an unnervingly nightmarish soundtrack as Margaret falls deeper into a conspiratorial rabbit hole where escape seems impossible. For a composer with no end of music doing a danse macabre between the tonal and the transgressive, his read on a typical “Omen” score is scary in a whole new dark light that gives him (along with Stevenson) the Mark of the Beast when it comes to a brightly terrifying future in Hollywood horror.
Tell us about your musical start and what led you to composing?
My first experience as a musician was as a guitarist, playing Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper songs in basement bands. This led into prog rock, then jazz fusion, then going to music school studying jazz theory and orchestration. My ambition was to be a jazz guitar player. But the reality was, if you wanted to make a living as a freelance guitarist, you had to play everything, so I spent years playing in reggae bands, wedding bands, pop rock bands, country bands, avant-garde jazz bands, you name it (this ability to “fake anything” turned out to be very useful many years later when I became a film composer). I started writing my own, quirky, left-of-center pop songs, which led me to getting signed to a record label in Toronto. The producer of my first record gave the bed tracks to Patricia Rozema, who was directing her first film at the time. She cut some tracks in, liked it, and asked me if I wanted to score “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing.” So my first movie just fell into my lap.
Your real breakthrough would be for 1997’s “Cube,” which would spawn a whole series of films, as well as a Japanese remake. What were the challenges of scoring a dystopian movie essentially set in one killer room?
It was actually a lot of fun. For the first time I delved into a dark sound design type of score and I really loved it. There was a lot of freedom both in the style of music and the creative freedom that the director Vincenzo Natali allowed me. Many years later I wound up working with him again on Amazon’s “The Peripheral.”
Another cult hit that definitely set you on your sometimes-satanic horror course was for Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” in 2015. Talk about the challenge of evoking the time period, and what do you think it was about your music and the film that got under audiences’ skins?
Actually, the direction from Robert was to steer clear of anything period wise stylistically. He wanted to create the mood of 17th century New England, but not the music. What actually won Robert over, was the video I sent him of me playing the Swedish Nyckelharpa, an instrument which originated in Sweden in the 14th century. It’s basically a viola, but with keys. It has an early music feeling to it, and as soon as he heard it, I was the man. Virtually all of the string stuff you hear on “The Witch” was performed using it. There’s something very witchy about the clackiness and scratchiness of it.
Your next score for Robert got even more disturbingly strange with “The Lighthouse.” How do you conjure nightmarish “foghorn” music for a two-character neo-Lovecraftian horror film, especially given its stark black and white look?
Again, we were looking for something that captured the mood of this harsh environment, but not stylistically of the time that the story is set. Music of the elements – the wind, the pounding waves, the frigid cold. The idea was to select instruments that might have actually been playing in an old lighthouse like a cornet and sn accordion. So we used a terribly played accordion (courtesy of me) and a brass ensemble played through a blender. Terrifying and atonal, but of the earth. That was the concept.
Talk about your music becoming “The Black Phone,” not only capturing the terror of a serial killer and a kid using his wits to escape a ghastly fate, but also making music out of phone sounds?
“Making music out of phone sounds” is a fantastic idea…..but something that I never actually did, because until now, no one suggested it!!! Working on this movie was a real pleasure. The director Scott Derrickson allowed me a lot of freedom to explore, and I think we created a score that supported the movie’s villain The Grabber and the terror that the young boys faced.
I particularly liked Blumhouse’s “Night Swim,” where you again captured a twisted, liquid environment and a sort of native spirit out for vengeance.
Finding the voice of the gruesome native spirit was a long journey, but ultimately the most rewarding. We used an amazing singer Christine Loch, who could conjure all kinds of deep earth growlings from the core of her being. You can also hear her on “The Witch” score. She’s my ace in the hole when it comes to otherworldly voice.
Were you a fan of the “Omen” series and Jerry Goldsmith’s scores before getting “The First Omen?” And how did you want your music to fit into the franchise’s approach while also being distinctive to this movie?
I did love the original “Omen” score. It’s obviously very iconic and influential in the supernatural horror canon. However, I liked the idea of really doing our own thing with it, but with the occasional nod (out of respect) to Goldsmith.
Arkasha Stevenson
Talk about your collaboration with filmmaker Arkasha Stevenson
Arkasha really loved the score I did for “The Witch,” which was the reason I was hired for movie. She loved the idea of having challenging, atonal music instead of a more melodic Jerry Goldsmith inspired score. Which is where I came in. I did try to gently move her away from a strictly aleatoric score, and use more themes, motifs and even an occasional melody. I think what we wound up with was very appropriate to the film she made.
“The Omen” films are as much conspiracy films as they are horror ones. How did you want to capture the idea of “evil” church versus “good” church with music that’s simultaneously sacred and profane?
I always looked for ways to subvert expectations, to throw people off balance. For example, using a traditional Gregorian melody, but below it having a drone that was a tritone away. So you have the familiar subverted with discomfort.
You’ve often used piercing brass in your scores. How did you want to get a blaringly scary sound for “The First Omen?”
Honestly, most of that was done just by using really great samples. They’ve gotten really good these days. With strings, it’s much harder and there is nothing like a room full of string players. Of course, there’s nothing as powerful as a room full of brass players either, but in a score where brass doesn’t play such a key role, you can kind of get away with it. In a movie like “The Lighthouse” you really needed the live brass because most of the score was brass. It would’ve exposed the sample too much.
Where the first “Omen” movie questioned if all of the horror was happening in the characters’ minds, there’s no doubt here at all as to the satanic forces at play. In that respect, how did you want to capture Margaret’s gradual process of discovery, and ultimate realization that she’s the ultimate target?
One drip at a time. It was a slow burn. In the beginning we have that Morricone song which really evokes how Margaret was swept away with a kind of romantic bliss at being in Rome. Then I just played little cracks in the facade. Of course, ultimately the score goes to some extremely dark places.
How important was emotion in this score as opposed to scares, especially given how likable Margaret’s character is as she’s subjected to all sorts of horrors?
The emotion is always important, and in any horror movie you want to strengthen the bond between protagonist and audience. If there’s no bond, the audience doesn’t care about the protagonist, and therefore, they don’t care about the story.
Talk about scoring the “birth” sequences.
Yah, those sequences were pretty intense. Arkasha did not hold back on those. Some fabulous acting there. The original music sketches were actually more intense and disturbing than what we wound up with because we found that what was on screen was actually carrying it, and all that intense music behind it wasn’t really necessary.
How did you want to work with female and male voices to range from the holy to their evil approaches, be it rhythmic, hissing or wailing? And did you write out the Latin lyrics?
Well, for the Jackal theme we hired four English gentlemen with extraordinarily low voices. They were “lower than low” specialists. They carried the jackal motif I wrote. We also created some real nice textures with Toronto’s Element choir, who specialize in improvisation. They did some amazing rhythmic stuff. With the Latin, it was pretty standard liturgical phrases for the most part, with the occasional “Satanae” (Satan) thrown in to spice it up a little.
“The First Omen” is arguably the most graphically disturbing film in the series. Did you ever get freaked out while working on this, especially when listening to your own music?
Usually I’m fine with watching horror movies. It takes a lot to freak me out. For me, it’s all theatre, not a thing that could conceivably cross over into the real world. But for that first birth scene, I admit I had to turn my head away while I was scoring it. They really did an awesome job on the practical effects for that. Not to mention the actor who did an incredible job.
Of course any “Omen” movie has got to employ Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic Oscar-nominated theme “Ave Satani.” How did you want to bring it in for exceptional spine-tingling “fan favorite” effect, and what was it like having it reborn for this film with your particular percussive spin on it?
This wasn’t my choice actually. I was kind of stuck at that part of the movie. Nothing I was doing was really clicking and making the moment. The “Omen” theme was imported there, and it really lifted the film. It was the perfect spot for it. This made me very happy. I did try to put my own Korven-esque spin on it, but it was a little difficult, since the original worked so well. My favorite memory was being at AIR in London in the big hall (originally an old church) and listening to the 30-piece choir singing Goldsmith’s theme. It was pretty awesome.
This film definitely opens up the “Omen world” to more prequel-sequels. Where would you see your music going for them?
Yah, I suppose there is a bit of a set up there for a prequel-sequel. All I can say is that I’d love to work on that. It was so fun working on this film.
How do you hope fans will view your score and this film in relation to the “future” “Omens” to come?
Some people may well go to see the movie expecting it to be a similar experience as the other movies in the franchise. But I hope that they’ll let go of any Goldsmithian expectations and be open to the new sonic world we’ve created here. “Omen” fans will react to the score both favorably and unfavorably. People say that the cardinal sin in Hollywood is to be boring. Some people may really dislike what I did, but it’s certainly not boring.
Do you think horror scores are basically “modern” classical pieces at heart, especially when it comes to “The First Omen?”
Well, I suppose it really depends on whether someone thinks that the music stands on its own as a piece of music or not. My job is really, solely to make the movie better. But it would be a beautiful thing and a great perk if people thought that this music could stand on its own.
What kind of identity do you think your music has carved out in the genre? And after notably scoring so many of these pictures, what do you think makes for truly disturbing horror music – and horror movies?
The unexpected. That’s usually my focus. How can I subvert expectations? Familiarity is the enemy of good horror filmmaking, and good horror composing. It’s all about surprise, about throwing the audience off balance.
Would you say there’s anything particularly scary about Canada that’s contributed to your effectiveness?
Great question. I don’t know if there’s anything particularly scary about Canada, but this country has very much shaped what I do. It’s a big place. So much open space. Like the prairies, where I grew up. I love that space, and that comes through in my music, that sense of minimalism. Staying on one or two notes and letting the audience wait forever for note #3. “The Witch” score is a good example of that. But you’ll also hear it in “The First Omen” as well.
See “The First Omen” in theaters, with Mark Korven’s score available HERE
Visit Mark Korven’s website HERE
Special thanks to Kyrie Hood at White Bear PR, and Brittany Rendak and Sharrin Summers at Fox / Disney