Event

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

(2012) dir Peter Strickland w/Toby Jones [92 min]
On the flipside of lyrical, horror-tinged storytelling, Peter Strickland's BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO features Toby Jones as a sheepish British sound engineer who finds himself in an existential crisis when he is contracted to work on recording sound for a gory Italian horror flick. Jones' performance is painfully contained and the gorgeously stylized period piece of the film reflects that containment until both erupt in a bold, unrestrained, and mind-bending conclusion.

Winner of four British Independent Film Awards including Best Actor and Best Director.

"It's a masterpiece of atmosphere, beginning with the dial set to 'creepy' and methodically turning it up to 'excruciating.' One of the downright scariest films in recent memory." Charles Bramesco, DigBoston

"Constructs a perpetually strange, unseemly series of events overshadowed (and sometimes consumed by) the spooky movie-within-a-movie that hangs over every scene." Eric Kohn, IndieWIRE

"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." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio is one horror film that opts to skip the usual frolic among those metaphorical monsters in favor of a deeply unsettling dive into the subconscious." Ian Buckwalter, NPR