Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

The Worst Film Ever

best movie i've ever seen.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Toby Jones' sound man travels to Italy to work on a horror film, and slowly becomes overwhelmed by his experiences.Unfortunately this does not happen to the viewer. Marketed as a horror film, this is a film without shocks or barely any suspense. It tries to ape David Lynch in its narrative obscurity, but never gets anywhere. In the end it's just another UK failure funded by National Lottery money that might have been better spent somewhere else.Toby Jones is pretty good, and the sound design is very well done. Along the way we get lots of shots of rotting vegetables (used in creating the sound effects for hair being ripped out and heads being diced) Daddy Long Legs crawling, Jones' failed attempts to be recompensed for his flight fare, people screaming while dubbing the film, bitchiness, etc. The first 30 minutes or so are actually quite absorbing.But what is the point? The film seems confused about what it is meant to be. And after watching some other very poor British movies recently like Under The Skin and Bronson, which also sink in their own pretentiousness, the UK film industry seems similarly sunk.Can we get back to making films people actually want to see?

I had heard very few things about Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio before viewing, but based off what I had heard, I really wanted to enjoy it. The plot sounded dark and twisted and I was looking forward to a clever psychological experience. Instead, I was extremely disappointed to find that Berberian Sound Studio was a full-on art house film with very little thrills or intriguing ideas. Also excluding a real ending or buildup, Berberian Sound Studio didn't offer me anything warranting a second watch. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy art house films and I can appreciate the themes and ideas that make it one, but Sound Studio was just so tedious in it's delivery that I was having a hard time caring about what I was seeing. I enjoy slow-burners as well, but this film offered really no thrills or stimulation, making it drone on with no escalation of tension whatsoever. Technically, it wasn't a complete disaster with some impressive lighting and composure effects and, of course, excellent sound, but none of this really mattered when the story and characters were so dull and lifeless. One of the few great things about Berberian Sound Studio is the acting showcased by the talented cast. Toby Jones particularly did a great job portraying the awkward and anti-social sound engineer. While his character was quite boring, I can't really fault the actor for that as it seems that was the way his character was written. While many of the actors and actresses in the film do a good job, the characters they portray just seemed so flimsy and uninteresting. I cannot really stress how dull Berberian Sound Studio is. It's characterized as a drama-thriller but the thrills are virtually nonexistent. It was much more of a psychological horror film, but even then, it wasn't at all scary. So really it's just nothing. There's no thrills, no excitement, very little tension and a blatantly pretentious ending. It's well acted and is technically impressive at times, but I can't help but feel that an interesting idea was wasted on making this boring and pretentious art house. Sound Studio attempted to build upon an interesting concept, but made the mistake of putting style above substance, making the film feel incredibly hollow and lifeless. It starts off decent, but there is quite literally no structure of storytelling or cohesive narrative, all painfully leading to a supremely unsatisfying ending. It attempts to play upon the viewers senses, but I'm sure most audiences would rather be entertained than experimented on, which makes Berberian Sound Studio a failure in that regard.

Never to return. The look of Berberian Sound Studio is gorgeous and the sound is marvellous, but the script goes nowhere. If the film had kept things simple, a man overcome by his immersion into the horror of exploitative giallo, then the film would have been a marvel, but the plot unravels (yes, reflecting the central character's state of mind, etc.) to the point that you regret the time investment you have made in watching it. Indeed, while probably very deep and surreal, the last quarter of the film just seems as if the script wasn't finished when production was greenlit and no ending was conjured before the final day of shooting. I have no problem with oblique endings (Lost Highway is fabulous), but this just dwindles away, which is a shame given the earlier promise. Sometimes just telling a story is all that is required, and Berberian Sound Studio just needed to do that.

I have watched many giallos and find many of them quite good. There's not so many other film genres that have so much oddities and as a distinctive feature they have very good musical scores and chilling audio effects and atmosphere.Even the old giallos were much better than this film. At least they had substance and somewhat plausible script. In Berberian sound studio there's just a man who works at the sound department and that's all. I couldn't believe how slow the film was and for the most of the time just screaming was being recorded. That appeared to be the shock effect used in this film. It's sort of tiring to realize that the film's not going to advance anywhere. It didn't appear to have an ending either.I have to say that this isn't much of a giallo homage and it's actually made in the UK, not in Italy. It's got nothing to offer for the fans of giallo. Distracting sound effects, ambient and screaming in the editing room. That's really everything what there is to this film.