Behind the Score of Becky
Press Articles
*BECKY - THE BEST SCORES OF 2020 - Film Music Institute
“Escaped American Nazi prison trash gets wasted “Home Alone” style in this gleeful destruction derby by the makers of the killer kids’ movie “Cooties,” who channel well-deserved payback this time around into a teen girl hellion. Nima Fakhara, a prolific composer who’s particularly impressed with his synth-thick scores for the likes of “The Signal” and “Detroit Become Human” really piles on experimental anarchy to memorable effect. With just a haunting bit of piano and voice-topped humanity for a kid who’s messed up from the start with the death of her mom, Fakhara soon drives her mad to get to the musical meat and potatoes of accompaniment for arrows, knives, boat motors and lawn mowers with rhythmic heavy breathing, growling electronics and piano chords. It’s an angry mass of inventive sampling that sets a beyond ominous tone for the vengefully berserk synth shenanigans to get started. If alt. music is the beat of teen ennui, hearing Fakhara warp trance rhythms into a girl’s warpath has all of the suspensefully intense, slasher-friendly, screaming theme payback you’d hope for in a batshit genre score like this, one that in its way plays like John Carpenter having a keyboard meltdown. In the ongoing wave or retro horror synth soundtracks, here’s a killer sound taken to the next level by a good mean girl, here by a composer who knows how to cobble together electronics into particularly inventive weapons for an ersatz Native American on the righteous warpath against the embodiments of white hate that’s messed with the wrong family.”
*FilmMusic Magazine Review of BECKY!
“After a horde of killer kids in “Cooties,” directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion reduce their number to one named “Becky,” who’s given very good reason to unleash “Home Alone” hell on the white power interlopers who picked the wrong day to search her isolated house for treasure. Nima Fakhrara, fresh off his last house hostage thriller “Survive the Night” (featuring O.G. die-harder Bruce Willis) handles a thirteen year-old whom John McClane has nothing on, let alone the karate kid from “Barry.” Leading “Becky” off with a rocking, war-whooping theme, Fakhrara gives the girl a batshit, industrially attuned score full of berserker rage to. Yet there’s a tender piano melody inside of her barbed wire synth anger as well, which gives just a bit of emo weight to “Becky’s” music as it hammers in the Nine Inch Nails, rulers, outboard motor and any other scum-killing instrument that Fakhrara can get his hands on. But what makes “Becky” more than a kill fest is how her character is fueled with the anger of bereavement to begin with, a haunting empathy heard with children’s musical toys and voice that’s about the ghost of her mom-bereaved past, one whose anger is ripe to be re-channeled. Warping electronics has certainly been a forte of Fakhrara in previous scores like “The Signal” and “Detroit Become Human,” and here he has true field day of growling, shrill synths, warped percussion, feedback and metallic string sampling that makes tonal harshness into a thing of visceral beauty. With vocal rhythm recalling Graeme Revell’s “Dead Calm,” Fakhrara mixes stalking beats with a frenzy of percussion, his scream motif delighting in the punishment. But no matter how crazed “Betty’s” score might get, one can always hear the inventive complexity of its madness and the gear that’s gone into it from toy synths to a personally constructed steel water phone. It all calls up ear-bashing, revenge-sploitation scoring as emo-electro insanity that conveys the idea of childhood lost in berserker musical rage that’s supremely satisfying.”
“Escaped American Nazi prison trash gets wasted “Home Alone” style in this gleeful destruction derby by the makers of the killer kids’ movie “Cooties,” who channel well-deserved payback this time around into a teen girl hellion. Nima Fakhara, a prolific composer who’s particularly impressed with his synth-thick scores for the likes of “The Signal” and “Detroit Become Human” really piles on experimental anarchy to memorable effect. With just a haunting bit of piano and voice-topped humanity for a kid who’s messed up from the start with the death of her mom, Fakhara soon drives her mad to get to the musical meat and potatoes of accompaniment for arrows, knives, boat motors and lawn mowers with rhythmic heavy breathing, growling electronics and piano chords. It’s an angry mass of inventive sampling that sets a beyond ominous tone for the vengefully berserk synth shenanigans to get started. If alt. music is the beat of teen ennui, hearing Fakhara warp trance rhythms into a girl’s warpath has all of the suspensefully intense, slasher-friendly, screaming theme payback you’d hope for in a batshit genre score like this, one that in its way plays like John Carpenter having a keyboard meltdown. In the ongoing wave or retro horror synth soundtracks, here’s a killer sound taken to the next level by a good mean girl, here by a composer who knows how to cobble together electronics into particularly inventive weapons for an ersatz Native American on the righteous warpath against the embodiments of white hate that’s messed with the wrong family.”
*FilmMusic Magazine Review of BECKY!
“After a horde of killer kids in “Cooties,” directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion reduce their number to one named “Becky,” who’s given very good reason to unleash “Home Alone” hell on the white power interlopers who picked the wrong day to search her isolated house for treasure. Nima Fakhrara, fresh off his last house hostage thriller “Survive the Night” (featuring O.G. die-harder Bruce Willis) handles a thirteen year-old whom John McClane has nothing on, let alone the karate kid from “Barry.” Leading “Becky” off with a rocking, war-whooping theme, Fakhrara gives the girl a batshit, industrially attuned score full of berserker rage to. Yet there’s a tender piano melody inside of her barbed wire synth anger as well, which gives just a bit of emo weight to “Becky’s” music as it hammers in the Nine Inch Nails, rulers, outboard motor and any other scum-killing instrument that Fakhrara can get his hands on. But what makes “Becky” more than a kill fest is how her character is fueled with the anger of bereavement to begin with, a haunting empathy heard with children’s musical toys and voice that’s about the ghost of her mom-bereaved past, one whose anger is ripe to be re-channeled. Warping electronics has certainly been a forte of Fakhrara in previous scores like “The Signal” and “Detroit Become Human,” and here he has true field day of growling, shrill synths, warped percussion, feedback and metallic string sampling that makes tonal harshness into a thing of visceral beauty. With vocal rhythm recalling Graeme Revell’s “Dead Calm,” Fakhrara mixes stalking beats with a frenzy of percussion, his scream motif delighting in the punishment. But no matter how crazed “Betty’s” score might get, one can always hear the inventive complexity of its madness and the gear that’s gone into it from toy synths to a personally constructed steel water phone. It all calls up ear-bashing, revenge-sploitation scoring as emo-electro insanity that conveys the idea of childhood lost in berserker musical rage that’s supremely satisfying.”