Variety
A delicately detailed immersion into the world of Z-grade Italian horror cinema that ultimately may or may not be a horror film itself ... a tense, teasing triumph.
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Berberian Sound Studio
Mind-bending psychological thriller set in the 1970s about British sound technician Gilderoy (Toby Jones) who travels to Italy to work on a gruesome horror film. As he goes about assembling the movie's terrifying soundscapes he finds his state of mind wobbling and his psyche under threat from the nightmarish task. Winner of Best Director, Best Actor and Best Achievement In Production at the 2012 British Independent Film Awards.
"Films that attempt to replicate the lurid style of Italian giallo films from the ‘60s and ‘70s often mimic the obvious details - colored gel lighting, psychedelic soundscapes and black gloved killers - without going any deeper. Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio takes an entirely different approach. This is a bizarre atmospheric thriller that digs deep beneath the skin to probe giallo’s bloody beating heart. The titular sound studio provides Strickland with both a means of paying homage to the esoteric details of giallo - particularly the genre’s unique approach to sound design - and a context for Gilderoy’s collapse into madness. Toby Jones delivers an exceptional performance as a naif who is thrust into bizarre world where cinematic horror and reality are inexplicably fused." (Fantastic Fest 2012)
2012Rating: M, contains violence & sexual references92 minsUKEnglish and Italian with English subtitles
DramaHorrorThriller
Berberian Sound Studio / Reviews
Total Film
Crammed with detailed craft, its appeal is further widened by dealing in universal fears: homesickness, identity, mental health.
Full reviewTime Out
In this era of cookie-cutter cinema, Strickland's deeply personal moral and stylistic vision deserves the highest praise.
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The Guardian
Utterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a musique concrète nightmare, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good
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Sight & Sound
A love letter to the weird territories of foley and film sound and also to giallo, the grand-guignol horror genre carved into the flesh of Italian cinema by Argento, Fulci, Crispino, Avati et al in the 1970s.
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Little White Lies
Psychedelic aesthetics, psychogenic fugues - it is the disorientating giallo Lynch might have made.
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Empire Magazine
Anchored by a typically flawless performance by Jones, Strickland's second film begins as an audio geek's dream, before spiralling inexorably into the stuff of David Lynch's nightmares.
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The Telegraph
With each cut and splice, Berberian Sound Studio becomes quietly insinuating and unsettling: as with The Artist, as with all artists, its worst fears lie in screaming and not being heard.
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