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Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, a sound tech for a horror film peppered with Tonia Sotiropoulou's screams.
Photo: Handout

When film sound engineer Gilderoy begins work on the mysterious new project, "The Equestrian Vortex," he quickly discovers that he hasn't signed up for a genteel nature film. Instead, it's a horror show, in more ways than one.

Gilderoy's psychological descent into auditory hell is the basis for "Berberian Sound Studio," a sometimes interesting, sometimes head-scratching movie that pays homage to the old ways of the sound-mixing world and to the "giallo" genre of horror that was prominent in Italy during the 1970s.

The story, most effective in its first half, follows the sheltered Gilderoy (Toby Jones, very good) as he encounters the collection of personalities in the studio: the pretentious director, the tempestuous producer and the untalented actresses who must scream repeatedly in the sound booth.

Many of these scenes are amusing. It's also a pleasure to watch the skilled sound folks of those days create sickening noises the old-fashioned way - by hacking watermelon or various vegetables - leaving it to us to connect those sounds with what's happening in the (unseen, but often heard) horror film.


'Berberian Sound Studio'



In English and Italian



Eventually, though, these scenes get repetitive, and the muddled final act neither builds nor gets scary. Writer-director Peter Strickland is much more interested in the atmospherics, so when Gilderoy plunges into the abyss (or wherever), we are left confused, and not in a satisfying, David Lynch kind of way.

