Berberian Sound Studio

                British director Peter Strickland’s second feature film charts the work of a sound-engineer/foley artist called Gilderoy on the schlocky Italian horror film ‘The Equestrian Vortex’. Upon being flown out to Italy the sense of unease that Toby Jones’ Gilderoy faces is palpable, both in the uncomfortable exchanges between him and the crew as well as in the mysterious absence of Santini, the film’s director. Gilderoy’s labour on the film predominantly involves shredding, splicing and smashing an assortment of vegetables to create the sound effects for the movie’s series of extremely violent scenes. Interestingly, as an audience we are never actually shown a single clip from Santiams become hopelessly tangled in a web of Lynchian flavoured confusion, resulting in audio clips from the film, from Witches’ vaginas sizzling as they’re invaded with red hot pokers to libidinous goblins being rudely awoken from their slumber. Gilderoy contorts and builds upon these audio-scapes; bending and manipulating the sound waves whilst also recording additional material for them, namely in the form of Italian women repeatedly screaming.

 

                At times the film utilises these sound recordings for cheap laughs, most memorably in the case of the goblin, whilst at others managing to create a tangible sense of mesmeric, hysterical dementia through the variety of screams and splatters that are endemic to The Equestrian Vortex’s narrative. The discordant sense of unease on set, coupled against the inherently disturbing nature of the film’s sound design, drive Gilderoy to the brink of his sanity. He becomes hypnotised and overtly embroiled in his work on The Equestrian Vortex, which perniciously begins to engulf him. The lines between reality, the film and our protagonist’s dreams become hopelessly tangled in a web of Lynchian flavoured confusion, resulting in the latter half of Berberian Sound Studio  descending, or perhaps even collapsing, into a hallucinogenic whirlpool of the bizarre.

                Strickland’s first horror film seems to fall under the bracket of the art house-horror; horror films that are not merely self-reflexive in style by seemingly self-corrosive with regard to their generic framework. Berberian Sound Studio is not only very aware of the genre’s history, as seen in the good deal of esoteric reference points made to the giallo tradition, but consciously aims to dissolve and re-work the conventions and expectations of the genre. What better a narrative framework in which to do this than the film within the film, allowing The Equestrian Vortex to operate within Berberian Sound Studio as a tool of distanciation; highlighting the difference between its own goals as a horror film from the more camp and bawdy excesses of 1970’s Italian horror. While Berberian’s score and sound design are frequently shrill, foreboding and exceptionally uncomfortable, its narrative doesn’t share its aural backdrop’s, or The Equestrian Vortex’s, concern for scaring its audience.  

                And therein lies the rub. Berberian Sound Studio is constantly hinting at its propensity to terrify without every truly delivering. While by portions the film is a unique, intriguing and often spell-bindingly uncomfortable experience, its inability, or perhaps lack of concern, with frightening its audience is a bit of a letdown. While I wanted the film to punch me square in the face with a fist galvanised with fear, Strickland’s touch turns around to be more akin to an inappropriate face stroking; disconcerting yet ultimately quite harmless. Although I felt that I’d rather have watched The Equestrian Vortex, namely for a sequence wherein witches’ corpses are re-animated in a “poultry tunnel”, and aside from its reductive fear factor, Berberian Sound Studio is a bold and admirably unique plunge into the depths of the genre. It provides equal doses of laughs and chills through its superb sound design whilst masterfully disintegrating itself into a nightmarish daze of psychological turbulence.