Popular reviews

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★★★ 11

  What is Berberian Sound Studio about? Listen carefully.

  If you do, you'll hear the music of Broadcast, the Birmingham-based electronic group who provided the score to Peter Strickland's second film. Broadcast, along with Pram, Stereolab, Position Normal and Boards of Canada, were one of the first British bands to work in what's termed the "hauntological" style.

  The term "hauntology" was coined by the French theorist Jacques Derrida, who claimed that a society that considered itself beyond ideology - as the post-Communist West initially did - would be unable to imagine a future, and would instead be ruined by ghosts of the past. To understand what it means in terms of music, remember that the Boards of Canada were named after…

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  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.

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  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 🇾🇪 ★★★★½ 14

  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…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★½

  "silence."

  Blow Out + Beyond the Black Rainbow ÷ Mario Bava = Berberian Sound Studio.

  a much better film about foley artists than NOBODY WALKS, that's for sure. dug the style, dug toby jones, dug how it crawls up its own asshole. mmmm lovely.

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  Review by Tasha Robinson ★★½ 1

  Another in the great tradition of films about filmmaking, this is the rare entry about something other than a screenwriter, director, or actor: in this case, a meek British sound engineer, hired away to a scruffy, disreputable Italian studio to provide quality sound design for a grotesque-sounding giallo full of garish misogynist tortures. The film's genius is in never showing the film that the engineer (played by Toby Jones) is working on—the camera just focuses on his wincing responses, as he stabs cabbages or sizzles water in a pan to make the proper squelching or burning sounds. His descent into the hell of creative participation in something he doesn't believe in strongly recalls the madness of Barton Fink, but the…

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  Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★½ 7

  Absolute audiophile heaven. And not even half as stupid as I thought it was going to be. The headphone watch on this was transcendent, often kicking off serious Lustmord energy. If this were a review of just the audioscaping we’d easily be in five star territory. But honestly, as it stands, it’s pretty visually and thematically compelling as well. Especially when the movie is in dialogue with Italian exploitation horror (a genre I love dearly). The mirror it holds up to the genre is formally exciting. It tilts at the dangerous masculinity and base misogyny that seems to be found down in the very DNA of Italian cinema from the 70s, and it does this while never becoming exploitation itself.…

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  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 in the board; I’m on the tape; I’m gone.

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★½

  "This is not a horror film, this is a Santini film." - Santini,

  Someone had to do sound design on a scene where people are doing sound design... I'm so fucking deep!

  A sound tech is hired to help the Berberian Sound Studio create the sound effects for a horror film by an elusive director named Santini. The man becomes entranced by the process and slowly devolves into madness... or does he? It's a slow paced, atmospheric thriller and that creates a great theatrical experience.

  This is a Giallo inspired film with great cinematography, score and lighting. The sound design is unsurprisingly one of the best parts of Berberian Sound Studio. It's one of the rare times where I thought…

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  Review by 1313: 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 🍌

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  Review by Joe McKeown ★★★★★ 2

  HoopTober 8
  Part XI: In a Glass Cage (7/8 Decades: 2010s)/(6/6 Countries: UK)

  "It must have been the magpies."

  With only his second feature, Peter Strickland finds real form here with Berberian Sound Studio - it's a real singular vision and a completely different kind of horror film.

  Set in the 1970's and with its largely Italian cast of characters, there's references to Giallo, but it flips it all on its head. When I think of Giallo, the first thing I think of is the images, but Berberian's primary focus is on the sound. It deconstructs filmmaking down to its core, giving us an inside look at one corner of the industry, whilst building a completely different kind of horror…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 12

  After falling in love with Dario Argento last October, I've been gradually exploring what I can find of Italian cinema, in particular the mystery/thriller genre "giallo". As my enjoyment and appreciation grew, I decided it was finally time to check out Peter Strickland's modern examination of the genre.

  A British sound engineer travels to Italy to work on a film, but due to a series of miscommunications he finds it less satisfying than he had hoped. As the monotony of the job and the overproximity to this disgusting material grate on him day after day, he slowly begins to lose his mind—and as he does, the narrative structure of the film likewise begins to disintegrate.

  The film is a lot…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★½

  65

  Complicity of cinema's violence.