On the general listenability scale, In Dreams falls somewhere between Alien³ and Sphere. Definitely not something that fans of traditional music are going to appreciate very much, but if modernism (or post-modernism, whatever) is your thing, you'll enjoy this, even if it doesn't have the same personality of Elliot's other scores.

What I find so great about Goldenthal's music is its pure originality in film context, this work futher pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in orchestral film music, assissted by loud, screeching saxophones and grinding electric guitars. This time they are real guitars, unlike the samples heard in Alien³. Traditional film music purists may scoff if they want to, but anyone willing to accept new ideas will be rewarded with a fresh perspective on horror scoring.

Not having seen the film, I am unsure of how the well the songs included on this CD work, but I would have appreciated them more had they been placed at the end of the album and not in the center. The song's placement disrupts the flow of the score and may be extremely irritating to listeners, as it was to me. The song that *is* at the end of the album, "Dream Baby," was written by Goldenthal himself, and though it introduces something new to the composer, it is still fairly banal and boring like most film songs of its variety.