Isolation is the name of the game in Peter Strickland’s new thriller Berberian Sound Studio. The film concerns itself with a British man Gilderoy, played perfectly by Toby Jones, a sound engineer who is asked to come to Rome to work on the sound design of a new Giallo film that is currently in post-production at the Berberian Sound Studio.

The film begins with Gilderoy walking into the Studio for the first time. The first person he runs into is the receptionist who warns Gilderoy, before he can get a sentence out, that she doesn’t speak a lick of English. This is a running idea throughout the film. Gilderoy is the only person in the film who speaks English thus whenever anyone else talks to each other in the film it’s in Italian. There are numerous shots of him looking lost or in wonder of what is being said. A lot of the shots that are framed around Gilderoy are tight close ups on his face.

Adding to the confusion, the film they are working on is never shown. Images reflect on the actor’s faces as they watch the film they are producing. Other than 2 or 3 minutes of a film that consists of shots of landscape, there are no scenes that take place outside the studio. Strickland aims to keep you feeling as alone and secluded as possible. And it works.

From the look of Berberian Sound Studio, making sound for film can be as fun as it is as frustrating. Using everything from fruit, instruments, and different pieces of flooring and ground (dirt, grass etc.), Gilderoy and his team begin to craft the sounds for their new film. For example, when someone is getting hacked to death by a serial killer, cutting up a watermelon is used.

Strickland’s filmmaking works wonders (for a while) for the film. References to some of the great Italian horror directors, like Dario Argento and Mario Bava are thrown in. Even David Lynch, the great surrealist filmmaker, has a hat tipped to him. The tone of the film is quiet and calm. But you can tell something is amiss. You feel like at any time something could go awry. Credit goes to Strickland for keeping the audience on its toes throughout the film.

Jones’ performance as Gilderoy is one of his best. As a man who is slowly losing his mind, Jones keeps his performance in check. He doesn’t go overboard with acting and stays on the right side of the camp. The same cannot be said about Strickland. While roughly 80% of the film is well done and a very good example of claustrophobic filmmaking, the final 20% loses the plot. The film ultimately goes nowhere, which is very unfortunate considering what preceded it.

Rarely do I think films need to be longer but in this case, I think another 20 minutes could have been beneficial to the film. Berberian Sound Studio feels like Strickland ran out of money and had to just release what he had filmed. Because of this the film never becomes what it originally set out to be. While Berberian Sound Studio isn’t a total loss, it has great atmosphere, sense of dread, and some great performances, I can’t quite recommend it since it derails from its plot about 20 minutes before it ends.

The opening of Red Lights immediately sets it apart from the usual crop of horror films and thrillers that get dumped out into multiplexes almost every week. Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her assistant Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) drive out to a haunted house in Vermont. Matheson is a psychologist specializing in the paranormal who, with Tom, go around the country debunking people’s claims of “supernatural events.” After an eerie séance at the house in Vermont, Matheson quickly figures out the real cause of the haunting and then heads back to her teaching job in Ohio.

It’s these kinds of sequences that make the first hour of Red Lights a compelling and original take on supernatural thrillers. Matheson, Buckley and one of their students (Elizabeth Olsen) go around disproving the existence of spirits and expose psychics as frauds. Not too long after one of their biggest busts, news gets out that Simon Silver (Robert De Niro) is coming out of retirement. Silver, a blind medium who has never been debunked, is so good at what he does that Matheson won’t go near him. “He’s dangerous,” she tells Buckley, who’s enraged at her for not wanting to pursue Silver. Tom tries to work on exposing Silver behind Matheson’s back, and then all hell breaks loose.

It’s at this point that Red Lights veers off course straight into a ditch (more sensitive readers be warned: minor spoilers follow). Weaver, who shows how woefully underused she’s been over the years, is suddenly taken out of the picture. Suddenly Murphy becomes the focus as he encounters more and more strange phenomena while looking for evidence of Silver deceiving the public. Rodrigo Cortés is able to keep things compelling as he introduces more mysterious elements into the story, but once he shows his hand everything falls apart. Ludicrous events pile on top of each other, leading to a climax that makes one wish for the fun low-key first half of the film to return.

That feeling doesn’t end up returning though as Cortés decides to double down on the stupidity. Almost every review or comment about Red Lights eventually brings up its ending. Cortés tries to go for a big “A-ha!” moment and falls flat on his face. The final twist goes for a more profound conclusion, but its execution is jarring with the sensational events that came before it. It’s undeniable that Red Lights has plenty going for it with its strong cast and excellent first half, but Cortés comes dangerously close to tanking the whole thing by the end. Red Lights remains interesting throughout, but by the end it’s appealing in the same way a train wreck is.

Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio is very much a movie about movies. In it we follow Gilderoy (the excellent character actor Toby Jones), a sound man who accepts a job offer in Italy on a giallo slasher. Its 70s setting helps put the focus on Gilderoy’s analog sound work which requires some creative ways to get desired sounds. All we see of the giallo film is a psychedelic credit sequence but there are plenty of times where we watch Gilderoy stabbing cabbages, pouring hot oil on a pan or blending tomatoes to mimic the sounds of the heinous acts we aren’t able to see. Eventually all of the fake brutality gets to Gilderoy, and he slowly becomes unable to tell the difference between the film and his own life. Strickland uses plenty of tools to show Gilderoy’s feelings of alienation (there are no exterior shots) and loosening grip on reality, but the results are a mixed bag. Some sequences, like one where Gilderoy is mimicking sounds of the night, are executed beautifully in a way where it’s hard to tell what’s real and fake. On the other hand, Strickland makes a big mistake by subtitling all of the Italian in the film which, since Gilderoy can’t speak a word of the language, doesn’t give us the same feeling of confusion or alienation that he has. By the end Berberian Sound Studio dives right off the deep end with a moment similar to Bergman’s Persona, but its abrupt ending doesn’t make for a conclusion that’s too fulfilling. Berberian Sound Studio is definitely unique with some wonderful moments that nail what Strickland is going for, but it’s too uneven to be something truly great.

RATING: 7/10

Berberian Sound Studio

Next up was Here Comes The Devil, a US/Mexican horror film that left me feeling baffled after its screening. It starts off with a graphic sex scene between two women which ends with a machete wielding madman trying to murder one of the women before fleeing to a mountain. Suddenly the focus shifts to a vacationing family who let their son and daughter go hiking up the same mountain. The children don’t come back but are found by the cops the next day. The parents soon notice that their kids seem very distant, and when a check-up at the doctor reveals that the daughter doesn’t have a hymen the mother assumes that they were sexually assaulted by someone. Of course things aren’t that simple, and soon enough the mother starts to believe some sort of evil presence is involved while her husband takes the usual ‘skeptic/rational’ role. At the beginning of Here Comes The Devil I wasn’t enjoying the cheap and cheesy execution. The thing was shot on what looks like a poor DV camera, the compositions were laughable with their extreme close-ups and similarity to comic book panels, and the aggressive sound design was grating. But as it went on I started to warm up to director Adrián García Bogliano’s weird methods. His use of quick zooms and shoddy special effects felt like they came straight out of a student film, but the story kept the film going at a nice momentum. Towards the climax I even started to warm up to some of the absurd framing, but it wasn’t strong enough to salvage too much. Here Comes The Devil may be awful a lot of the time, yet I can’t deny its power at keeping me invested throughout.

RATING: 6.5/10

Here Comes The Devil

NEXT UP: I take on Thomas Vinterberg’s seemingly divisive The Hunt and try to not get seasick while watching Leviathan.

Recap of some of my Tweets from today:

Follow @WayTooIndie for full coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival!

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO: Some fantastic moments but it gets too bogged down in its insanity to be truly great #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 11, 2012

Now in the hot docs cinema waiting for HERE COMES THE DEVIL to start #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 11, 2012

HERE COMES THE DEVIL: A very strange movie that almost (Almost!) won me over in the end

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012