Acclaimed horror film Berberian Sound Studio is now available to watch for free on Channel 4’s streaming service, after airing on Film4 last week. Starring Good Omens’ Toby Jones, the 2012 movie is guaranteed to leave a big impression on you.
Set in the 1970s, it centres on British sound designer Gilderoy, who takes a job on an Italian film, not knowing it is a giallo (a horror movie). Gilderoy is shocked by the film’s violence as things become more and more disconcerting and bizarre.
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Written and directed by Peter Strickland, the film also stars Tonia Sotiropoulou, Susanna Cappellaro, Cosimo Fusco and Katalin Ladik.
Berberian Sound Studio holds and impressive 85% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Guardian calling it “seriously weird and seriously good”.
They added: “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.”
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The Spectator wrote: “I have never encountered anything quite so auditorily menacing… I promise you have never seen, or heard, anything like it, and Toby Jones’s performance is fantastically gripping.”
The Salon praised it as perhaps “the finest tribute to the old-school cinematic craftsmanship of the sound mixer and Foley artist I’ve ever encountered”.
The Independent added: “If you’re open to films that fearlessly twist the conventions, and that mine the language of sound and image for their own strange potential, you’ll get a kick from this rivetingly inventive, abrasively un-British piece of nightmare cinema.”
While Digital Spy correctly stated that the film was “destined to be a cult classic”, adding that Jones “delivers a hugely impressive turn as Gilderoy”.
Berberian Sound Studio is streaming now on Channel 4.
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