“Why We Had To Leave”: Netflix Debuts New Original Track for Upcoming Thriller Reptile

Yair Elazar Glotman and ARCA collaborated on the track which is part of the original score.

Kasey Moore · @kasey__moore
September 15th, 2023 - 3:00 pm ET

Benicio Del Toro as Tom Nichols in Reptile

What’s on Netflix can reveal exclusively a brand new original track from the forthcoming Netflix Original movie Reptile, starring Benicio del Toro and Justin Timberlake.

Arriving on Netflix on September 29th (the release date just pulled forward from October 6th) is the new thriller from first-time feature film director Grant Singer.

Recently premiering at TIFF, the movie follows the journey of Nichols, a hardened detective with a murky past who finds himself embroiled in a murder case that unravels his secrets.

Released today ahead of the movie release is one of the songs for the movie that’s composed by Yair Elazar Glotman and featuring vocals from Venezuelan-musician ARCA titled “Why We Had to Leave”.

Here’s the track in full from the official soundtrack from Reptile now available on Netflix Music:

Glotman is behind the entire original score for Reptile. Based in Berlin, the musician has previously collaborated with Netflix on the Oscar-winning movie All Quiet on the Western Front. Other credits include Joker, Last and First Man, and Netflix’s Barbarians.

Speaking about working on the score of the new Netflix movie, Glotman said:

“The process of working on Reptile was unlike anything I experienced before. It is a contemporary take on film noir, and the whole film is imbued with a sense of darkness, ambiguity and deception. Collaborating with the director Grant Singer on his first feature film was immensely special as he had a very wide array of musical references and we were able to geek out a lot about historical and contemporary bands, from obscure composers to film scores and of course the pop stars he has worked with. The result I think is something that can lead you in, thinking that this is a regular thriller soundtrack, only to turn the corner and surprise you with something darker or more abstract than expected.”

In addition to working on soundtracks, Glotman releases and performs his own music under his own name and under projects such as KETEV and collaborations with composers Mats Erlandsson and Viktor Orri Árnason.