I’ve unfortunately just missed the Halloween deadline with this spooky interview – Ryan and Hays Holladay (Resident Evil, Weapons). As the foregoing parenthetical gives away, the Holladays have made a splash recently with their scores for Zach Cregger’s horror films Weapons and Resident Evil. Naturally, we spend most of our conversation on those two films (particularly Resident Evil) and their broader artistic relationship, dating back to when their teenage years when they were first in bands together.
We hit on a few major pieces on Resident Evil, which also lead into broader concepts about scoring at large, like the impacts of having no temp score and the changing ideas behind the score. With the former, for years we’ve heard about the downsides of a temp (it’s something that people with even a passing familiarity of film music might know), particularly the dreaded temp love. But what happens when there’s been no temp and the director falls in love with silence? On the latter, Cregger’s initial direction was to avoid synths and have a trumpet-driven score, leading to a Bitches Brew/Dark Magus influenced score, awash in crashing brass cacophony. Of course, you’ll note that only hints remain in the score (which ended up much more synth-led).
That second point really stuck with me, as I constantly see complaints about why a score has gone with a particular music style or why didn’t they try “x” genre (not necessarily about Resident Evil, but broadly). The answer, most of the time, is that they did try these other things too, and what you hear is what worked best.
And before I forget completely, Ryan is the first speaker of the two.
The Holladays’ score for Resident Evil, and much of their other music (both together and solo) is available on all major platforms, while the film is currently in theaters. You can find out more about Hays on his website.
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