Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
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.
Berberian Sound Studio is a singular, deeply atmospheric exercise in meta-horror — it studies horror rather than enacting it, using sound design itself as the primary vehicle of dread. Peter Strickland's direction and Nicolas Jaar's sound work create an almost tactile sense of psychic unraveling. The cinematography meticulously recreates the look and texture of 1970s giallo production, functioning as both homage and critique. Toby Jones gives a characteristically precise performance as the increasingly destabilized Gilderoy. The plot, however, is deliberately thin — it is a mood piece more than a narrative, which serves its goals but limits dramatic engagement. The ending is genuinely divisive in a problematic way: the final act dissolves into abstraction that many viewers find unsatisfying or merely obscurantist rather than meaningfully ambiguous, undermining the careful tension built throughout.