'Wake Up Dead Man' Score: Unsettling Rhythms Unmask Hypocrisy

For the latest installment in the 'Knives Out' series, 'Wake Up Dead Man,' composer Nathan Johnson deliberately steered away from conventional church music, despite the film's setting. Instead, he focused on creating a subtle yet active musical score that reflects the story's core conflict between light and darkness, echoing themes of money and power.

Johnson utilized techniques such as metric modulation, where conflicting rhythms and tempos are layered, to generate an unsettling feeling for the audience. This approach aims to represent hypocrisy and double-speak, making viewers intuitively sense wrongness without being able to pinpoint its source until the narrative unfolds.

The music's primary role is to enhance the emotional depth of scenes without explicitly telling the audience how to feel. This delicate balance, achieved through fine-tuning and subtlety, ensures the score serves as an invisible hand, deepening the film's impact and emotional resonance.