Berberian Sound Studio

Berberian Sound Studio

Starring Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Fatma Mohamed

Directed by Peter Strickland

Synopsis:
Gilderoy (Toby Jones) is an acclaimed sound engineer, and he's brought to Italy to work on a film that he first thinks is a film about horses, but when he arrives and meets director Santini (Antonio Mancino) and Francesco (Cosimo Fusco), he learns that the film is actually a horror film in the Italian style of Giallo, and he is none too pleased since he's never done horror before.

As the film progresses and the people around him become more irritated, angry, and mean, Gilderoy himself begins to doubt his own sanity, suffering from homesickness and questions his own morality, and as the film grows darker, so does Gilderoy, culminating in a decision he must make - whether to keep his nice, albeit intimidated, self - or become as mean as those around him.

Review:
In the 60s and 70s, Italian Gaillo films were all the rage.  Directors like Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci centered their films around madness, alienation, sexuality and paranoia, and often used post-production to work out the sounds of the film.  Toby Jones brilliantly portrays one of those men, the sound engineers whose work (known as Foley) brings the sounds to the film by implementing everyday objects - such as smashing watermelons, cutting lettuce, pulling apart tomato stems, and spraying water on a hot plate - to give the sounds to the film. 

As to the film itself, there's not a lot I can specifically say about it.  To be honest, it's not a typical horror film.  There's not one drop of blood shed, no deaths seen, no supernatural elements, nothing.  At its heart is Gilderoy's struggle to retain his modest sanity in a world filled with evil and menacing people.  Everyone he works with seems to hate him, and treat him like garbage.  He's alienated from his mother, who writes some intriguing letters while he's gone, and is oddly pursued by the leading actress in the film.  As he struggles with retaining his own sense of reality, he becomes increasingly paranoid of the people around him, causing him to have some internal struggles where he eventually faces himself in his own film in a sense, and coming out a different person.

Where the film truly shines is in how it doesn't show the audience the finished product.  You never see the film they're making, but you can definitely hear it, and the sounds themselves are truly terrifying.  In today's horror society, this is often a misnomer, as general audiences want to see everything, and get upset when they don't.  That's why most people won't enjoy this film, because it doesn't offer a visual horror, but rather an audible one.  Mix in some extremely off-putting cinematography moves and an extremely complex protagonist, and you've got one of the weirder films to come around in a long time - but not in a bad way.

Summary:
If you're a fan of Italian Gaillo films, or want to see a deep psychological thriller with great sound effects, this is the film for you.

My Rating: A-