Berberian Sound Studio is a new film by the British director Peter Strickland, about the travails of an English sound foley artist (Toby Jones) who is hired by an Italian production to create the sound for their Giallo film The Equestrian Vortex, at the titular studios in mid-70s Italy.
I haven’t done a film review in a while, but Berberian Sound Studio sufficiently piqued my interest, and left enough of a curiously unsatisfying taste in my mouth, that I’m compelled to write it up here for DM. The other main reason I am writing this is because it has been nigh on impossible to find a negative review of this film anywhere online. There are two bad reviews of note so far, but one of these comes from the Daily Mail, and as such doesn’t count.
The almost unanimous critical acclaim the film has received from the press is bemusing but not too surprising, really. This is a film that ticks a lot of boxes. It takes a hitherto scorned genre (Giallo, which if you are not familiar, are mid-70s Italian horror/exploitation flicks directed by the likes of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci) and strips it of the grubby grindhouse connotations it has in favor of polishing it up for an art house crowd. It takes the gaudy, over-the-top brilliance of the original films it references and replaces it with it with an arch, guilt-free sense of smugness
As I’ve mentioned, BBS is an unsatisfying, frustrating experience. It is a hard film to classify, even though it is being touted as a horror-cum-thriller-cum-psychological exploration. The trouble is that it is neither horrifying nor thrilling, and as a psychological exploration it really doesn’t have much to say. What makes it even more frustrating is that it looks, and, yes, sounds brilliant, and it is hard to fault Strickland as a director in that regard. He has managed to make a film about films (and film-making) that thankfully avoids the clichés of Tarantino and his ilk, but like the 90s wunderkind, it feels hollow and bereft of any real meaning. And crucially for a film about horror, and Giallo in particular, it’s just not scary at all. In fact, at points I was plain bored.
As you’ve probably gathered, this isn’t going to be a good review. That’s not to say Berberian Sound Studio isn’t worth watching - it most definitely is, even just for the simple fact of letting the viewer making up their own mind. If you do intend on seeing this film, and you probably should, then I recommend that you skip what comes after the jump and go straight for the trailer. If, on the other hand you have seen it already, then you may find something worth discussing here.
More on ‘Berberian Sound Studio’ after the jump.