Chucky still promises to be your friend to the end…
That devilish doll gets a reissue for SyFy’s newest series, Chucky. Instead of dated, 80s jump scares, however, the horror series brings in a queer element with the addition of its young leading man, Jake, played by Zackary Arthur. Horror has always been a genre that deals with the dark truths of our lives, but this version is spry, funny, and a must-see for fans of some creative kills.
Composer Joseph LoDuca has been with the film franchise for several installments, but this new iteration was something very new to him. LoDuca is no stranger to the quirky, unique tone of Child’s Play, and he was very excited to tell a new, expansive story.
“Every part of the series is its own adventure. I’m always intrigued what the writers will come up next, because when you work on a series, your challenges, as a composer, are dictated by the writers. What are the new situations? What are the new characters that get brought into it? What is going to happen this week? We follow suit. As the writing gets more interesting and takes more risks, so does the music. Musically, there are a lot of influence by The Go-Gos, Billie Eilish, and Bernard Hermann.”
When I got into slasher films, I remember that horror would rely very much on the jump-scare–that pang of music that accompanied a particularly jarring moment on screen. Now that there are so many celebrated sub genres, the score can evoke a mood or character like never before, and that is something that LoDuca was striving to do.
“It’s astute to recognize that it has changed, especially within our relationship with film and TV. When I started, there was a lot more narratively driven horror out there with scoring. You were there to reinforce it, and that can go against things. Now audiences are hipper with horror, and you can’t rely on those old tricks like the strings blaring. They are seen as parody now. The most challenging thing that I imposed on myself was how to strangle and manipulate things to give you the sense of the dread and the anticipation of horror without relying on the cliché stuff.”
One of the more talked about elements of Chucky is how it features a young, queer student at the center (we have come a long way from Nightmare on Elm Street 2). LoDuca knew that it was important to show how the horror of a murderous doll could coexist with the themes of being afraid of one’s identity or young love.
“It was one of the things that I was able to approach in an authentic and real way. You have the drama of a gay lead character coming of age and this suburban life. Then you throw Chucky into the chaos. You have this wise-ass doll mixed in with real issues that real people deal with. I am hoping that I was able to do that even though we are switching gears a lot. I wanted to make those feel as real as I could.”
Chucky easily gets you into the mood of its twisted tone with the short theme music. It sounds like a carnival roller coaster to hell, but LoDuca was quick to point out that the tune should be familiar to fans of the demonic doll.
“The marketing team at Universal decided the theme from Child’s Play 2 was what they wanted to use for the 18 second title sequence. I re-arranged it. The theme is great for when we want to see him with the doll voice and he’s hiding his real identity. We used that theme very specifically in the relationship with Lexy’s sister who is autistic and to play up the innocence there. There is a theme that I wrote on a toy piano when I came onto Curse of Chucky, and that gets used in more dramatic situations. We have those signifiers as they appear throughout the series.”
The word ‘mangling’ came up a lot in my conversation with LoDuca, and it’s fascinating to hear how the composer wanted to take a familiar or well-known sound and put it through a Chucky filter. It twists our ear because we think we know some key strokes in the music, but then it leads to something scarier and twisted.
“I spent a lot of my time on the series with coming up with new ways of processing the sounds. We can do a lot of mangling with a few keystrokes. I think the only time I used a regular, straight piano was to illustrate the relationship between Jake and Devon. Any other time there is a keyboard sound, it is mangled in a way. One of the things I had fun doing was the revealing the backstory of Tiffany, played by Jennifer Tilly. She comes off, to me, as the sexy, Hollywood vamp. Sometimes it’s done as a sultry string line but then as a frestless guitar. You look for ways where you can insert those kinds of sounds to make them work.”
LoDuca went on to explain that the simplest adjustment in how you play an instrument can lead to unexpected sounds.
“You can do something simple with a violin even. You use the hairs on a bow to make the sound, but what does it sound like when you turn the bow around and use the wood? That’s a completely different sound. It’s subtle and weird and it has a bone-chilling effect.”
Is horror scoring underappreciated? Those jump-scare are seen as an overused device but it’s part of the history of horror. Does LoDuca think the stigma still lives on like a doll that cannot be killed?
“It’s on the lower rung of films to be released, because they are cash cows. They are usually made with little money, and they are made as a long bet. If they do well, they can propel a studio. I think a lot of Miramax Films were supported by their sister company, Dimension Films, back in the 90s. Now you have the tradition of Blumhouse Films, which do very well. Like someone who works below the line on, say, a Bond film, we are trying to bring something unique to tell a story. How can we use what resources or limitations to create something great? That’s what composing is. A great freedom for people who work in horror is that we don’t have any rules. If you are working on a romantic comedy, there isn’t a lot of variation in how you approach the material. Horror is so much more open.”
Chucky is streaming on Peacock.