Film: Berberian Sound Studio

Director: Peter Strickland 
Genre: Horror
Source: UK (2012)
Rating: Unrated (R?)
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: C

Again I feel like I have to take a major portion of the blame for not enjoying this movie more than I did. It's a well-crafted homage both to foley artists and sound mixers everywhere, as well as to Italian horror films in particular. Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about the latter, and so the techniques that seemed so so rich and compelling early in the film eventually left me a little bored, waiting for something more. I can't help but wonder if better knowledge of the tropes and tricks of Italian horror would have given me the extra boost I needed to completely get wrapped up in the movie.

Director Peter Strickland does a few things really well in this film. As mentioned, the film is a love letter to the art of film sound, and we see countless shots of Toby Jones' Gilderoy (and his coworkers) mixing levels, reading effects charts, and carefully recreating horrific sound effects to the apparently depraved film they are making. In a brilliant decision, we never actually see footage of the film they are working on, and yet we become increasingly horrified--as does Gilderoy--due to the graphic dialogue, his disgust as he watches the screen, and the sounds we see him creating. Rotting vegetables, frying meat, even actors in studios making noises with their mouths--all of these become cringe-inducing as we are left to imagine the horrors that these sounds would be associated with. It's really effective.

Similarly, the film is intensely claustrophobic and hugely effective in creating an oppressive atmosphere. Gilderoy never seems to venture outside--or at least Strickland chooses him not to show him there. Instead he wanders corridors and stands in sound studios, so not only do we get no exterior shots, we don't even see a window to look out of (there are a couple of exceptions to this closed-in concept that I won't get into here). The whole space feels restrictive and oppressive, and as Gilderoy's sanity (maybe? or just dreams? or reality?) gets looser and looser this disconnect from anything natural makes him increasingly seem like a prisoner unable to escape his captors. It really is disconcerting.

So with these great elements in play, I wish the film had gone somewhere a little more than it did. The climax, if it can be called that, is ambiguous, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but in this case it turns out to be quite unsatisfying. It left me feeling like the previous 90 minutes were a little bit of a waste. That's not the way you want to leave a film.

So though the first half or so of the film really works well in creating atmosphere, the second half doesn't pay off like it could have. A bit of a let down.