2 out of 5

Label: Back Lot Music

Produced by: Jed Palmer

Director Leigh Whannell and composer Jed Palmer made the right choice for the score to body horror movie Upgrade: the amped up pace and grimy but sci-fi sleek aesthetics of the film suggest something hard-edged and processed and produced, but instead, the music is a straight-up juxtaposition to this, going for minimal, moody atmospherics. It helped to ground the movie, giving it’s characters and setup weight… which also made the moments when the beat finally drops – when the film dips into grindhouse gore and wacked out camera movements – that much more impactful. It is a score I absolutely loved while watching the movie, and I do think it’s a key component to the movie’s success as entertainment.

As a standalone experience, though? Turns out it’s a hard sell.

The tonal flow is still there, from the dark alley, depressed ambiance of the opening few tracks to when The Reprimand brings a beat that’s suggestive of the danger and violence it accompanies on screen, but on tracks like The Procedure, you can tell where Palmer is adhering more to scoring story elements than trying to find a thematic voice for the film. While the track opens up quite gorgeously at its end (and is appreciably fleshed out by the closing track), the songs don’t necessarily create a picture without the film’s imagery to accompany them, and don’t really flow from one to the next, or exactly feel related to each other, beyond the general grouping of ‘quiet’ and ‘loud’ tracks. I maintain that it’s a perfect score for the movie, but doesn’t offer much depth or moments of distinction on its own.