Marco Beltrami has the unfortunate history of being, in my mind, a composer who promised so very much but has gone on to deliver so very little. If Scream alerted the world to his presence and Mimic was a great horror score, nothing he has written since can compare with those first efforts. He has continued to score increasingly desperate-looking horror thrillers (and they don't come much more desperate-looking than Joy Ride) and is now stuck in a seemingly never-ending rut of providing low-budget, low-impact music for these mediocre movies.

Joy Ride could hardly be less aptly named because this album is absolutely dreadful. The music features drum loops, occasional brass bursts or string runs and is atmospheric enough, meaning it may well function adequately in the movie, but also meaning it sounds dull and uninspired away from it. Of course the old defences will come out - music should function in the movie first and foremost (fair enough), it's not easy writing interesting music for this kind of movie (perhaps fair enough) - but then again, imagine what Bernard Herrmann might have written for this movie; imagine what Jerry Goldsmith might write today. Beyond comparison.

There's really not a whole lot else to say: it's dull, lifeless, mediocre music taken to extreme. Each track blends into each other one and it's no stretch to say that the album's only redeeming features are the amusing track titles - Beltrami seems to be trying to rival Christopher Young in that department. Good luck to him, because he's not likely to be rivalling him in any other department any time soon.

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