Australian director David Twohy followed up his surprisingly good science fiction film Pitch Black with this haunted-submarine tale starring, believe it or not, Matt Davies and Bruce Greenwood. Such big names. Anyway, one aspect of Pitch Black that just didn't work was Graeme Revell's absolutely atrocious score, unworthy of a $250 student film, let alone a big Hollywood production. That Twohy turned to him again for Below is unbelievable, but a few lines in the liner notes seem even more bizarre: Twohy says he originally conceived the film without any music at all, but then realised it needed it so allowed Revell to be let loose after he'd been waiting to score the film for months.

To allow him to be let loose is one thing, but to let him turn in a score that is half a sub-Media Ventures Crimson Tide rip-off (well, it's set on a submarine, so using identical music is obviously the answer) and half generic, bland, boring suspense material. Revell wrote what is arguably the worst score ever to feature in a big-budget film in Tomb Raider but frankly he's written several others that verge on being as bad. I'm sure he's a nice guy but his continued employment continues to surprise me - not every score needs to be big and orchestral, film music would be pretty boring in fact if that were the case, but surely it needs some sort of hook of its own at the very least. To just have an orchestra rumble along for an hour and a half seems a total waste of time and money, in fact if you're going to do that then frankly you may just as well rely on the natural sound effects to do their thing and forget about having music completely.

Below is the sort of score commissioned by a director who doesn't have a clue about how to use music in a film and, while I would love to say this in a nice way I'm not sure it's possible, it's the sort of score written by a composer who doesn't have a clue about how to write film music. At least, after 35:31, it ends.

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