This is another entry in my Complete Score Breakdown Series, focusing on the complete scores to films that have had abbreviated previous releases or have gone unreleased.
Today we are looking at Untraceable (2008) by Christopher Young.
Christopher Young has written a ton of thriller scores over the years, and I have to tell you that I think his music for the 2008 serial killer thriller Untraceable is among the very best of them. Considering how many he’s done, that’s saying a lot, but he is absolutely in top form with this one, which I firmly believe is one of his most severely underrated works. The score has the standard Young main theme hook, and this one doesn’t disappoint, weaving throughout the film with pleasant consistency and satisfying variations. Despite the fact that this is a contemporary techno-thriller, Young doesn’t go overboard with electronics; they are present, but they are rarely of a rhythmic sort, and are much more often of a creepy, atmospheric sort that really get under your skin and often match the orchestra in ratcheting up the suspense to nearly unbearable levels. The orchestra, primarily strings, brass and piano (very little percussion in this score) are the highlights here and do a very creative job evoking a unique terror soundscape and keeping things moving at a tight clip. Take the CD track “Acid Decomposition”, my favorite, which is so well-written, alternating between sparse string writing at low and high registers and desperate statements of the main theme…please everyone, check this score out.
So how much music is missing? Well, the CD runs a fair 45min 15sec. The film version score runtime came in at just under 62 minutes, and the amount of unreleased material totals over 22 minutes. It seems as though two CD tracks went unused in the film; “Net Nuts”, which I couldn’t find anywhere in the movie, and “Blinking the Code”, which was clearly an alternate version of the track “Acid Decomposition”. Interesting that both versions of the same cue made it to the CD.
This is just a fantastic film score, a terrific modern thriller work from start to finish, and I hope it gets an expansion.
CURRENT CD RELEASE RUNTIME: 45min 15sec COMPLETE SCORE RUNTIME (AS HEARD IN FILM): 61min 50sec ALL KNOWN ORIGINAL MUSIC WRITTEN FOR THE FILM (INCLUDING UNEDITED CD TRACKS, UNUSED TRACKS, AND/OR ALTERNATE FILM VERSIONS, WITH NO IDENTICAL DUPLICATION REGARDING FILM TRACKS & CD TRACKS): 70min 35sec
UNRELEASED SCORE RUNTIME: 22min 15sec
Complete Score Cue Titles and Cue Times (unreleased cues named by me for the sake of identification):
+ – previously unreleased (or includes previously unreleased material)
1. Untraceable (2:16) 2. Cyberperp (0:30) + 3. Missing Flowers Pt. 1 (1:46) 4. Missing Flowers Pt. 2 (0:50) 5. Goodbye Kitty (1:04) + 6. Elevated Psychosis (0:55) + 7. Bloodletting (2:56) + 8. Cooperative Enforcement (1:04) + 9. More to Come (2:30) + 10. Taking Work Home (0:30) + 11. Griffin’s Off (0:46) + 12. Lured (0:46) + 13. Building a Foundation (2:06) + 14. Incinerated in Cement (4:30) – (second half of CD track “Incinerated in Cement”) 15. Starting Again (0:45) + 16. Close to Home (1:13) + 17. Death After Life After Death (2:34) 18. Gouldylocks (2:24) 19. Griffing Gotten (0:43) + 20. Acid Decomposition (5:17) 21. Timeline Clues (2:12) + 22. Session Locked (4:15) – (edited from CD track) 23. Take Time (1:00) + 24. Marsh on the Bridge (4:24) – (first half of CD track “Incinerated in Cement”) 25. Inverted Captivity (2:55) + 26. Viewer Executioners (3:59) 27. Kill With Me (4:21)
Current CD Release Track Titles and Track Times:
1. Untraceable (2:24) 2. Missing Flowers (2:44) 3. Death After Life After Death (2:42) 4. Session Locked (6:37) 5. Acid Decomposition (5:30) – (alternate film version of “Blinking the Code”) 6. Gouldylocks (2:27) 7. Viewer Executioners (4:15) 8. Net Nuts (2:51) – (unused in film) 9. Incinerated In Cement (7:22) 10. Blinking the Code (4:52) – (unused alternate CD version of “Acid Decomposition”) 11. Kill with Me (4:21)
