There’s nothing better that slasher score fans getting served up than a table full of screaming brass, slithering strings and knife-hammering percussion, all with the gravy of final girl emotional melody. On those notes, those aficionados of blasting terror scoring will eat well when listening to Brandon Robert’s tastily throttling score for “Thanksgiving.” It’s filmmaker Eli Roth’s Valentine’s Day to the 80’s heyday of such dead teenager pictures as “Prom Night,” “Terror Train” and “Final Exam,” all with a particular dinner table ode to “Happy Birthday to Me.” Inflicting what some might view as just deserts for a Black Friday gone catastrophically wrong (thanks to these senior class Massholes) is John Carver – a pilgrim-masked maniac with an axe to grind (along with corn holders and a big turkey basting oven). Accompanying the stalk n’ slash and particularly ferocious, hilariously gory kills is Carver’s musical enabler Brandon Roberts. He’s a composer who’s no stranger to serving up clever dollops of instrumental fright, particularly given his main seasoning in the company of O.G. Ghostface scorer Marco Beltrami.
With talent destined to claw up the ranks from music preparation and orchestrating for such composers as Beltrami, Bear McCreary and Lalo Schifrin on the likes of “Underworld Evolution,” “Rush Hour 3” and “Caprica,” it Roberts progressed from additional music on “V,” “The Wolverine” and “A Quiet Place” before proving his co-composing and bloody solo worth on major scores for “The Woman in Black 2,” “Chaos Walking” the series “Motherland: Salem” and the Pet Sematary prequel “Bloodlines” (along with far less sanguine dramatic works like “TURN: Washington’s Spies,” “Buttercup” and “The Way I See It”). Yet given hanging around Beltrami’s chops, the particular genre that he keeps stabbing at for good reason is horror. And here Roberts delivers the goods for Roth’s enjoyably twisted film with vicious, loud effectiveness in creating a new killer that one suspects will be back for seconds, and thirds. Wielding his orchestra like a killer who knows his way around blunt instruments with all the feels, Brandon Roberts’ “Thanksgiving” is a bombastically gleeful serving of symphonic slash that definitely won’t make diners leave hungry.
Were you a fan of horror to begin with?
Yes, like most folks I loved “Scream” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.” But I also loved the vibe and tone of non-slashers like “The Exorcist,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and “The Exorcism of Emily Rose.” Once Blumhouse started making films, I feel like we had another resurgence of really interesting horror films that continues to this day. My most recent favorite was “Black Phone.”
Tell us about your road to composing. What’s your advice on going from an assistant to becoming a credited co-composer on major projects?
That’s a tough one because I believe that everyone’s road is different, and there are infinite paths to success. Obviously, luck and relationships play into it, in addition to hard work and talent, but I do believe there are a couple things that can help. The most important is to try to get your foot in the door with a composer higher up in the food chain and offer to help in any capacity. Do whatever is required at 100% and show initiative to learn and make it better (even if it’s making coffee). At some point, you will be known for good work, reliability, and a good attitude. Coffee will turn into printing stems, printing stems might turn into tracking a cue, and low and behold, one day you are asked to write a cue because everyone can count on you. But again, this is just my opinion and there are 1000 other success stories different than this.
Marco Beltrami (L) and Brandon Roberts (R) hold their Emmy Awards for “Free Solo’s” score
Having spent so much time with Marco Beltrami, what did you learn about the ins and outs of horror scoring, especially when it came to films about maniacs?
Regarding scoring in general, I learned about minimalism from Marco. He can make a 5 minute cue feel like 30 seconds. To this day I still don’t know how. I tend to over-write the scene so there is no place to go, at a certain point. Marco does an amazing job of holding back and unleashing when necessary. Ironically, in “Scream,” I think it was more full-on and “Mickey Mouse-y,” but that was the style then. Modern horror tends to be less “score-y” and more sound design/silence. What I think gets lost is the fun and melodrama that Marco’s “Scream” style brought. It gave the audience permission to have fun on the emotional rollercoaster.
Of the many scores you’ve done with Marco, I’m a particular fan of “Underwater,” which for me is the best undersea sci-fi horror monster film yet. How did you want to conjure the water for it, and the giant Lovecraftian creature in its depths?
Well, thank you for the kind words. That film was a wonderful experience. First, the director, Will Eubank, gave us a lot of creative freedom. That was 1/2 the battle. From a musical standpoint, we realized that all the low-end frequency spectrum was taken up by Sound FX since the entirety movie takes place underwater. So we thought of ways to make a horror/action score using high frequencies. Marco, Buck Sanders, and I came up with the idea of using female vocals (including crazy rhythmic effects, eerie bends, etc). To create an immersive “water feel”, we had 3 sopranos slowly walk around a surround mic and a binaural mic to create movement. We also utilized a ton of electronics and B3 Organ. B3 cuts through even the thickest water:)
Brandon Roberts (L) and Eli Roth (R)
You first teamed with Eli Roth on “Trick VR Treat.” What’s it like scoring that kind of all-encompassing technology, especially when it comes to the “direction” of where the music is coming from?
One of my first questions was regarding any technology on the panning of the music. Because it’s VR, I wasn’t quite sure if we needed to mix the score differently or provide different stems. I got lucky and the dub mixer wanted a traditional delivery and any extra immersive audio tweaks were done on the dub stage on their end.
What do you think made Eli unique among the other genre auteurs you’ve worked with?
One of his great strengths is that he is a massive film fan, first and foremost. It doesn’t just make him a wealth of knowledge for how to write and shoot his own films, but also makes him a lover of all of the elements that make up a film…including music. He knows and loves, film music and is a great supporter of it. But he is also very savvy with the music spotting. He leaves music out in places, and that is very effective.
What was your reaction to the original “Thanksgiving” trailer in “Grindhouse,” and what do you think about how Eli filled it out to feature length?
I saw “Grindhouse” in the theatre back in the day and the trailers were the standouts for almost everyone. After so much time, I didn’t really expect there would be a feature version ever made, but he proved me wrong. I was surprised he updated it to current day, however, it was the right call. He described it as if the movie was so abhorrent and offensive that every copy of the original had been destroyed, and now it had been remade based on a surviving script. I loved the idea of that.
Unlike “Scream,” there isn’t much “meta” horror reference humor in “Thanksgiving,” a film where the laughs comes from the characters and the situations. How did that affect the score?
Marco’s “Scream” scores are so fun and quirky. I think the meta references gave permission for that…plus Marco is really amazing at combining horror/action, with quirkiness. In “Thanksgiving,” Eli wanted to lean more into the disturbing quality. Like the rawness of the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre score. I made a ton of sounds using bowed metals, grinding sounds, and then combined some ratcheting clock elements and fiddle to add a disturbing grittiness.
What’s the biggest difference between scoring “serious” horror like “The Woman in Black 2” and “serious ‘funny’ horror” like “Little Evil” and “Thanksgiving?”
I think its atmosphere. “The Woman in Black” scores had melodic and thematic sections, of course, but the majority of the score is this disquieting atmosphere that sets the mood more than steers the drama. In “fun” horror, ironically the score has more akin to animation scoring. Big, bold musical statements that can be completely over-the-top and unabashedly dramatic.
The teen victims of Thanksgiving start off none-too sympathetically at the Black Friday massacre that they essentially cause. Do you think it was important to bring some “likeability” to their characters?
One of the first things I wrote was Jessica’s Theme. Eli really wanted a simple beautiful theme for her that could create a sub-conscience empathy for her, as she had lost her mother and was in a difficult family situation. Almost no one else is likable:) But he somehow gave them all these little character moments of redemption. Or they are such a-holes that you can’t help but like them. That was more a testament to the script and performances.
John Carver certainly has a wide array of Pilgrim-themed weapons here. How did you want to capture those “instruments,” particularly when it came to your use of metal percussion, as well as a wryly funny fiddle?
The irony is that the original Pilgrims were so pious that traditional musical instruments were not really used. It was mainly religious hymns as I understand it. I cheated with the fiddle, but justified it by the fact that it could be transported on a ship (it also just seemed like a fun challenge to integrate fiddle into a slasher). I also tried electric carving knives, but they yielded limited results. The constant buzz is actually therapeutic, which was not the desired effect, obviously. So my colleague Andrew Lembo got a huge array of cymbals from drummer Jared Pascale, and we tried every possible unorthodox way of playing/sampling them.
The slasher sequences here are unusually energetic and gory, and pretty much over-and-out for maximum impact. How did you want to score them give that vengeful, ultra-gory violence? And did you have a favorite kill here?
I learned a lot from Eli on this. He kept music dry for as long as he could during tense moments, and then we exploded for the gore moments. When it happened, it was a hybrid approach of crazy orchestra, processed cymbals/sounds, and electronics. But the orchestra definitely led the charge.
How important is balancing dissonance and melody in a slasher score?
Very good question. I think of constant dissonance/tension like never lowering the volume. After a while, it can lose its effect. So by finding moments to change the vibe to tender, introspective scoring, it serves the dual purpose of humanizing the characters, while also giving your poor ears a break from the tension. Of course, these moments have to be written into the script, which they fortunately were in “Thanksgiving.”
The “stalking” musical set piece of “Thanksgiving” is the “turkey baking” sequence. Tell us about scoring that series of near misses before the climactic roast?
Ironically, it was the last thing that was written and we had hit our stride by this point. I understood what Eli wanted regarding ebb and flow. The challenge was keeping the interest going, as the scene is 7 minutes long, or so. So we picked where we wanted music to really lead it, and where tension was best handled by sound design and musical silence. It was smooth sailing on that one.
How did you want to handle the big Thanksgiving dinner scene?
That was a daunting one. Eli was pretty clear it needed to eventually go completely off the rails. But, like the baking scene, it’s incredibly long, so finding fenceposts and arrival points for the score to change up was critical. Fortunately, he wrote several long builds into the scene, so I was able to restart and ramp the tension back up for each of those. It was like a pallet cleanser for the score so I could musically regroup.
At their heart, slashers are Agatha Christie mysteries, and “Thanksgiving” has a particularly clever one in constantly shifting suspicion. Talk about playing that level of the score?
I tried to not show my hand for fear it might reveal the killer. So I played everyone as a potential killer when they were being painted as suspects. Audiences are so savvy that if I scored someone too sweet, they might already know it’s a misdirect. But not if everyone is scored “bad”.
I particularly enjoyed the “Thanksgiving” album cue titles.
There is no greater pleasure in life than picking ridiculous cue titles. No joke, we start from spotting, and everyone gets a say. Sometimes Angela Claverie, the music editor, would come up with a zinger. Sometimes a great one comes to you at night. They are a true joy.
You just scored the Pet Sematary prequel “Bloodlines.” What was it like to tackle that franchise, especially given its origin story?
The director, Lindsey Beer, had such a clear vision of what she wanted that I felt like it was about following her lead. I really liked the prequel storyline and didn’t feel like it impeded on the existing book. It added to the lore. The challenge is following in Christopher Young’s footsteps. The man is a genius. I got to see him the other night for the first time since he taught one of our classes at USC and basically accosted him with “thank you’s” and accolades. He brings so much craft and class to the horror genre.
On a totally different note, you scored a truly horrifying, yet inspirational fact-based film called “On a Wing and a Prayer” about a man forced to land a plane. Talk about capturing that kind of terror that turns into confidence.
I remember hearing the story when it occurred, but didn’t really realize how dire it was. I first wanted to write an inspirational theme that could be used in different iterations (action, heroic, dark, etc). Then it was about creating constant ebbs and flows of tension. Because so much of the film occurs in confined space, we chose to score the overarching drama, the epic challenge of many people helping this man from multiple locations, and then, his eventual spiritual renewal.
Given that we’re sure to see future adventures of John Carver, are there any holidays you’d like to see him and Eli tackle next?
Ha, my friends and I joked that he should just go down the list. Valentine’s Day is obviously taken. Maybe there is a crossover potential with one. The Pilgrim & Harry Warden
What’s your worst Black Friday story?
None. I stay completely clear of the stores from Thursday through Sunday.
See “Thanksgiving” in theaters, with Brandon Roberts’ score on Milan Records HERE. Visit Brandon Roberts’ website HERE
Special thanks to Jamie Bertel at Sony Music