Fans of the satirical franchise may still have their hearts allied with Marco Beltrami’s first Scream score, but his fourth outing – meatier, at nearly an hour on CD – manages to work in spite of being generally low key.

Beltrami’s focus is on peripheral sonics, brooding undercurrents, and little thematic snippets rather than the direct approach employed in the first film, and the orchestral palette is a more organic balance of electronic and orchestral sounds.

Sidney’s Theme is still a blend of fuzzy electronics and sampled chorals, but it’s been stretched into a more nuanced version, evoking Sidney’s suspicions and distrust in broad strokes with the odd percussive stab. A distant female voice figures as a lament in “When You Let Someone Go,” and it’s a simple piece that covers Sid’s repressed trauma without clichéd, overwrought instrumentation.

The theme variation “I Know How You Feel” features a brief piano and string interpretation, and it’s a fine example of Beltrami’s ability to write empathetic material for a character with epic demons in her past; the instrumental gentility helps render what’s now a genre archetype more humane, and counterbalances the standard shock stabs she’s going to encounter by the boatload as the film reaches its conclusion.

Beltrami’s style during the nineties was big orchestral scores with ferocious brass writing for horrific moments, but he’s toned down the shock factor in favour of unrelenting unease, so while there are a handful of snarling cues, much of Scream 4 deals with looming terror prior to the assault.

He’s also chosen a smaller sounding orchestra, perhaps to emphasis the plights of a few characters, since the expanse of human chum that dominated the first and second films is dialed down.

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Varese’s CD offers up a solid 57 mins. of score, and those wanting the source songs can find them on Lakeshore Records’ 35 mins., which contains 10 songs and 2 cues by Beltrami: “Don’t Mess with the Original” and “Jill’s America,” edited suites of theme and brief underscore cues present on the Varese disc.

© 2011 Mark R. Hasan