By Anthony Willis

Back Lot Music, and Waxwork Records

An AI doll gains self-awareness…

The SF version of the Creepy Doll movie trope makes use of several songs during its runtime, but the score, presented here, is by relative newcomer Anthony Willis, who has had “Additional Music” credits on things like POTC: Salazar’s Revenge and previously composed the music for 2019’s Festive How To Train Your Dragon short, Homecoming, the videogame Fortnite, and was BAFTA-nominated for his score for Promising Young Woman.

The album, which runs just over an hour, opens with a very lift-muzak style – but more addictive – theme in the form of “Funki Headquarters” before taking us into a lovely stretch of four or five piano-based tracks, carrying a real emotional weight, interspersed with wistful moments and melodies that imply a childlike promise for the future.

This then goes squirrely just as you’ve got used to it, and we start to get tense electronic vibes and more overtly futuristic and technological passages, really from “Prototype” onwards. “Calibrated Response” brings us proper horror threat music, but then it’s “Bad Boys Equal Bad Men” that goes full-on with the horror musical tropes, with discordant blaring horns, trembling strings, and so forth. There’s plenty more of that horror tension and action to come too, with the likes of “She’s Still Plugged In” and “Workshop Duel.” Again, most of the threat and action involves blaring horns, frenzied plucked strings, and electronic baselines and bits of all manner of disguised sample sources. Thankfully that’s samples of sounds, not of other songs. Later we even get the synths revered and overlaid on each other in dizzying ways.

Speaking of songs, although several more are used in the film, the two included in the soundtrack are both source songs sung by Jenna Davis as M3gan. “Tell Me Your Dreams” hits first and may be the most disturbing thing on the album, as M3gan’s childlike voice comes over as sort of like GlaDOS singing in the videogame Portal except far, far, creepier and less funny. At least you’re prepared for how creepy she is when she then throws in a brief verse of “Titanium” later, which of course has a lot more resonance given that she’s an android.

Verdict: Willis gives us a decent mix of scoring styles. The piano-based motifs and melodies carry a good deal of touching emotion, the tension and action cues are cleverly done, if fairly standard horror tropes these days, and the SF elements blend them nicely to remind us of M3gan’s” artificial nature. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a better example than most of the usual horror-leaning fare, and has genuine emotion and genuine creepiness. 8/10

Currently the score is available to download or stream, but a vinyl version will be released by Waxwork Records in June, which looks to have some nice art and booklet stuff too.

David A McIntee