‎Berberian Sound Studio (2012) directed by Peter Strickland • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Berberian Sound Studio

2012 Directed by Peter Strickland

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.

Toby Jones Tonia Sotiropoulou Susanna Capellaro Cosimo Fusco Hilda Péter Layla Amir Eugenia Caruso Antonio Mancino Fatma Mohamed Chiara D'Anna Kata Bartsch Lara Parmiani Suzy Kendall Salvatore LI Causi Guido Adorni

Country

Languages

English Italian

thriller drama horror

92 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Todd Gaines ★★★ 9

A tall Leprechaun goes to work at an Italian giallo sound studio. A proper greeting. A Gallagher moment. Acting all Enya like. Yummy chocolate! Reimbursement. Language barriers. Fuckin' dubbing. Spiders are icky. Demonic moaning. A cool-as-fuck doggy. Silenzo. A thing-a-ma-jig. Mario's brother. A red-hot poker. Blowing bubbles. Always swallow the seeds. Twigs. Sometimes you just need to scream. A lit candle. Fuckin' curses. Reelz of film. Tickling is fun. The line-up. Ding-dong. Lights, camera, action! Cows like to graze. The letter from Mum. Serpent semen. Unending screams. Eerie, without a money-shot. Unique, with fuckin' fantastic audio stimulation of the mind. However, a film I couldn't quite become fully invested in and therefore I can't fully recommend it.
Review by Adam Cook ★★★ 3

Having greatly admired Peter Strickland’s debut feature, Katalin Varga, and been intrigued by the synopsis for this unusual follow-up I’m sad to say I left feeling a little disappointed by Berberian Sound Studio. It is undoubtedly clever and meticulously crafted but it is also frustratingly boring for large passages as it aimlessly shuffles towards a perplexing, but not all that interesting, climax.

Toby Jones stars as Gilderoy, a stuffy and uptight English sound engineer who is hired to edit the audio for a giallo horror film in Italy. Working in a claustrophobic and windowless studio (the studio of the title) the placid Englishman succumbs to the horrifying violence he is paid to work on. Although steeped in gialli references from…
Review by 🎃 Steve of the Dead 🎃 ★★★★½ 17

Ever since I saw a review of it in Empire and Sight & Sound and was enticed by adverts for screenings of it at the fabulous Cornerhouse every time I went by on the 50 bus for a couple of weeks, I have been counting down the days until I saw Berberian Sound Studio.

It's odd, really. I've not seen Peter Strickland's previous film, Katalin Varga. I'm not especially knowledgeable about Toby Jones' work. Plus, I'm not someone who has a massive amount of background knowledge about giallo and Italian horror films. So as I started to watch it, I was trying to figure out exactly what about it had pulled me in to wanting to see it as much as…
Review by Jonathan White ★★★★½ 42

Lise and Jonnie's What A Wonderful World 2015

30, 15, maybe 7 and a half IPS, but no slower. Quarter inch; at least half track, but probably full track, save for that narrow band reserved for the almighty pilottone.

The grand Revox turning over the split-flange NAB hub reels hypnotically; the silent Nagra with its always naked head stack; its glowing VU eye dances, visualizing the sound of a macheted melon as a decapitated head drops; the Nagra, appreciatively, gobbles it all up.

Are the reels turning slower, or am I just moving farther and farther away?

I’m on the tape; I’m in the board; I’m gone.
Review by Hollie Horror ★★★★★ 11

"Sound is alchemy." -Peter Strickland, director/writer.

For the longest time there was so much praise given to the French film Amer which is supposedly a homage to gialli of the 1970s (specifically the third segment). What Amer attempted aesthetically, Berberian Sound Studio achieved audibly AND aesthetically.

"The world of sound awaits you."

Really, it goes without saying that I have a strong connection with Italian gialli and horror cinema. In ways, sometimes it feels as though it is my lifeblood. While the stories have almost always lacked something (something being cohesive, sensical plots), it was because we were being blown away by the imagery and the sound. It isn't all in the [fantastic] music either, from the sound of the…
Review by Tony the Terror😼 ★★★½ 3

Daily Horror Scavenger Hunt - August 2018

5. uk horror

This film is a mood and today was a great day to watch it. I didn’t feel like doing anything at all today so this super slow burn was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to watch. Toby Jones is pretty fantastic and it’s awesome to see him in a leading role. I loved all the educational sound effects stuff and the sense of dread that was maintained throughout.

I’m not even going to pretend like I had a clue as to what the ending meant and sometimes that really pisses me off, but I liked everything leading up to it so much that I’ll take the ending as a challenge and rewatch this when I’m in the mood to think more.

Bananameter: 🍌 wet lettuce heads for drowning and stabbing people WHO KNEW 🍌

Recent reviews

Review by Joe ★½

Some of the aesthetic is cool. Too bad nothing happens.
Review by redeyespy ★★★½

Generally successful as an ode to the giallos of the '70s. Or at least to the process behind the making of one. The sort of pictures Dario Argento and Mario Bava created. Film buffs should eat it up, with its peek behind the curtain of low budget post-production. Multiple shots of reels and cue cards. Those familiar with Italian cinema of this ilk will yield the most enjoyment, but the many nods to David Lynch, existential '70s movies like TWO LANE BLACKTOP and the obvious similarities to Brian DePalma's BLOW OUT will sustain others.

This is a rare contemporary suspense movie that never resorts to gimmicky violence or cheap thrills, the kind you would see in a giallo, in fact. We never see a frame of EQUESTRIAN VORTEX. But we do hear it. It's enough.
Review by Jacob Reader ★★★

Horror A Year -- 2012

I really wanted to like this because the premise reminded me of Blow Out but I found it pretty underwhelming for the most part. Regardless, it's worth a watch for the claustrophobic visuals akin to Pontypool, Toby Jones, and the fun with audio throughout.
Review by Becky Darke ★★★★

Life imitating art imitating life. A film of suggestion and the unseen. Contrasts both cultural and symbolic. Contradictions and comparisons. Simmering tensions versus explosions of aggression. Violence versus the mundane. What is real versus what is fake versus what is imagined. All this presented through subtle performances and sublime editing. And of course the glorious sound. Bravo.
Review by Kelly Konda ★★★

The type of film you really want to like more than you actually do.

FULL REVIEW
Review by Adam8174 ★½

I've complained fairly often about the subgenre of Weird short stories about cursed movies or movie productions. I've always made the caveat that perhaps I don't like the stories only because they spend so much time failing to capture creepy sounds or images, and that a film would be a better medium for weird stories about film. This movie puts that to the test, and the answer suggests that maybe that isn't all there is to it.

I really enjoyed a lot of things about the Duke of Burgundy and I might've had higher expectations of this if I had known that it was by the same director going in. I can see some similarities, but most of them are…
Review by RoloTomassi ★★★★

Shocktober 2018 - part 15

What a trip. Surreal, ever so slowly getting creepy as hell and leaving the audience asking what one might just have seen. I'll defenitely think about this a few times before I fully understand what happened in this.
Review by Justin Shaw ★★★ 2

Very slow.......but good and creepy/unnerving at points. Controls emotions/perceptions with sound and the vocal deliveries of the actors.
Review by transmogrifier ★★½

46/100

Never got on its wavelength.