Why Did The Friday The 13th 2009 Film Score Disappoint Fans?

Steve Jablonsky has created some of the best action music scores in recent years, topped off with his work in the Transformers film franchise. Perhaps, that's what was so surprising when he was chosen to score Friday The 13th 2009. Not that he was an out of left field choice as he had scored almost every Platinum Dunes film to that point and Steve also scored some of Michael Bay's directorial films as well. The reason it was surprising was that his style just does not seem to fit at all with a Friday The 13th film. After Friday The 13th was released in February of 2009, it was even more surprising that his score was so flat and felt like it was pushed to the background of the dialogue and action in scenes in the film.

Like I mentioned before, Steve has created some excellent scores in the past and I don't want to bash him as an artist, but something about his score for the latest Friday The 13th felt way off. Jablonsky's score is not terrible, but it under-performs in key moments of the film and seems to be rushed. Not that this writer disliked the score for Friday The 13th 2009 entirely, however, it did feel like he was somehow restricted in the majority of his composition. In fact, his score seems so limited that a full soundtrack score of his Friday the 13th music was never officially released! He has one track of score music on the film's official soundtrack while the rest of the music originates from artists that were littered throughout the movie. Even Steve's score for the following year's remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street received a full soundtrack score release!

Other films that Jablonsky has worked on seems to have given him the ability to open up his music to a lot more cues, which makes total sense considering the subject matter he has to work with. Steve could have created a pretty good score for the newest Friday The 13th movie, but one has to wonder if there were other forces involved that caused him to create the score that was used for the reboot in 2009? Could he have had limited time to get a score created, or did he just misinterpret the sound of the film franchise?