A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

The idea of an Alien vs Predator movie seems to have been around since, approximately, 1066 but for whatever reason, previous attempts to make it have all been aborted, but the movie finally arrived this year, and quickly went again.  Quite why there was such a clamour for it I'm not entirely sure (the Alien series got progressively worse with each movie and the Predator one was hardly brilliant to start with) but, anyway, there was, and now the world can enjoy the latest work from director Paul W.S. Anderson.  He was so impressed with Harald Kloser's music for The Day After Tomorrow (well, somebody had to be, I guess) that he hired him for this - but he had quite some major boots to fill, namely those of Alan Silvestri, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Elliot Goldenthal and, erm, John Frizzell.

In actual fact, the composer has made a pretty good fist of things.  Two  of those four composers attempted something extraordinary with their work (namely Goldsmith and Goldenthal) and it was hardly likely that Kloser would come up with anything to rival their work in ambition or scope, but it can certainly stand alongside the more "standard" fare of the other gentlemen.  It is certainly somewhat generic, but then that's pretty much to be expected in this type of music, and it's on a higher plane than much of the music written for modern day horror movies.  Then "Alien vs Predator Main Theme", while not one you're likely to find yourself whistling after listening to the CD, is impressive enough, and sets the tone for the rest of the score.

One of the surprising things about The Day After Tomorrow was how "small" it sounded, rarely seeming to want to rise to any of the post-apocalyptic heights one may have expected, but that is not a criticism which could be labelled against Alien vs Predator.  The soaring "The Pyramid" is quite beautiful, with the theme later reprised in "History of the World", where it gets a considerably darker hue.  In between is the terrific action track "Dark World", with the orchestra somewhat inevitably augmented with electronic percussion, but it works well enough.  Kloser's music rarely directly resembles that of other movies in either of the two franchises, but I suppose the closest it comes to any is to Alan Silvestri's Predator scores, particularly with the pounding percussion of the impressive "Alien Fight", a darker-than-night piece of action scoring.  The occasional addition of a chorus adds an impressively powerful dimension, with "Alien Queen" combining orchestra, choir and creepy slashing synth noises to good effect; and the anthemic finale "The End... or Maybe Not" is very good.

OK, so it's hardly a great work of art, but for a pleasingly diverting 40 minutes (a perfect running time for this sort of thing) you can't go far wrong.  It's a considerable step up from Kloser's other summer 2004 blockbuster score and far better than many may have expected a film like Alien vs Predator would get.  Kloser is certainly a composer who shows promise and, while they may not have been the greatest movies ever made, he has been lucky enough to get two plum assignments right at the start of his career.  I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from him in future.

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Tracks

1. 1904 (1:16)
2. Alien vs Predator Main Theme (3:29)
3. Antarctica (2:19)
4. Bouvetoya Island (2:09)
5. Down the Tunnel (1:02)
6. Hanging Bodies (1:45)
7. Southern Lights (1:40)
8. Predator Space Ship (1:11)
9. The Pyramid (1:11)
10. Temple (1:10)
11. Dark World (2:56)
12. History of the World (3:20)
13. Alien Fight (3:14)
14. I Need This (1:45)
15. Weyland's End (:56)
16. Alien Queen (1:37)
17. Showdown (3:23)
18. The End... or Maybe Not (3:30)