Berberian Sound Studio: A Rare Treat

Of all elements the horror genre has found to fear in itself, sound design has never made the cut. The tropes of the form, the actors, the motivations, the process of filming, the theatrical release, and even the home viewing of slasher pictures have been re-purposed as their own scary stories, but never the post-production work. As a former post-sound guy, this has always felt like an oversight, considering how profoundly disturbing long hours in the middle of the night watching murder on a loop can become. I think I may have written about it in a short story once, but there's no need to track that down, as Berberian Sound Studio takes every ounce of potential from this idea. Welcome to a curious little masterwork.

Berberian follows a mixing engineer named Gilderoy (Toby Jones, The Mist) who takes a position in the titular studio and discovers that he'll be mixing a violent movie, which shocks the sensibilities of a man used to nature documentaries. Gilderoy is one of the only native English speakers in the building; the first of many layers establishing the introverted Gilderoy as a painfully alone protagonist. The film, which is never shown, is a giallo taken straight from the work of Dario Argento, and even features a duo of in-studio foley artists / synth musicians who come off as a Lynchian vision of the band Goblin. Gilderoy struggles against the overbearing will of the director, the criticism of the studio owner, most of the film's female cast, and even a receptionist who engages him in conversational riddles that would make Harold Pinter proud. The story never deviates from the daily drudge of completing a film, and our main character says maybe thirty lines in the entire film, but the world it creates borders on fetishism and the experience is unforgettable.

First, it is a film that pays homage to the genre of Italian horror by celebrating, not what made them great, but what made them memorable. Berberian evenly dances between two tones, creating a funny puzzle that is equal parts amusing and bemusing. Nothing is jokey, but moments ring so true that it's hard not to laugh at the humanity on display, or even the small ticks in their delivery. Suddenly, the moment will pivot into minor phantasmagoria, and the inversion is seamless. The film's biggest weakness concerns a plot point near the end that, while not stupid, stands out because it has been a film mostly devoid of story, and thereby temporarily breaks the lush dreamscape. It's a great journey, imagining that the creators of Suspiria temporarily lived in Suspiria, until the film worries it might not be enough like Suspira and falters.

Berberian also fixates on the technology of 70s film studio, which for a former studio monkey like me, borders on the pornographic. All of the reel to reel tapes and broken knobs, jerry-rigged filters and handmade cuts—It's an analog wonderland where each small turn of a dial by Gilderoy allows the audience to experience the vicarious joy of studio experimentation and the professional horror when the little things go wrong. If you were the type of person who got emotional over shots of the instruments in Shut Up And Play The Hits, here's your thriller equivalent.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of Peter Strickland's film is the complete lack of violence. I wonder if it's not rated because, taken by MPAA standards, this movie might technically be a PG? As you would hope for, most of the nightmares in the movie about sound design are produced by sound design, wherein a scene of stabbing watermelons in the studio is juxtaposed again a lonely man unable to hurt a spider, but the exaggerated sonics of both are cruel to the viewer—which isn't to say that silence cannot be just as powerful, especially in sequences where the actors are giving voice to their own deaths but the soundproof studio allows nothing to escape. Repeated visual motifs and blurred shots achieve an antagonism which forces the viewer to place more trust in the audio. Even Jones' understated delivery exists to remind that this is not a story for the eyes.

Berberian Sound Studio is a rare treat, and while as a horror fan and recording geek I feel like that treat is meant personally for me, it's hard to shake the otherworldly spirit and the raw talent on display. I strongly recommend you seek this out in theaters.