Behind the Strange Scores for ‘Zone of Interest,’ ‘Poor Things,’ ‘The Killer

Sometimes directors don’t want you humming the music as you leave their film.

More than ever, filmmakers are seeking fresh musical approaches, especially when the subject matter is dark or fantastic. Three late-2023 releases demonstrate this with music that catches the ear in unusual ways.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos had never commissioned original music for any of his previous films. So for “Poor Things,” which seemed to demand a bespoke score, he turned to a composer who had never written one before: English musician Jerskin Fendrix, whose 2020 album “Winterreise” he had admired.

Fendrix is a classically trained pianist and violinist who has written an experimental opera and defiantly resisted conventional pop-music sounds. Lanthimos hired him six months before beginning principal photography on his sci-fi black comedy starring Emma Stone as Bella, a Victorian woman raised from the dead who embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery.

Fendrix began writing based on the script, concept art, production drawings and costume designs. “I was allowed to compose in a very pure and unrestrained way,” Fendrix tells Variety from his London studio. “We decided very early on that there would be no temp score. We never discussed a single other piece of music, any other score or composer.

“Mainly, the music is serving to illuminate the psychological interior of Bella,” he explains. “It couldn’t be a score that was polished or…