Berberian Sound Studio

IMDb RATING

6.2/10

18K

YOUR RATING

Toby Jones in Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Gilderoy, a sound engineer, arrives in Rome to work on the post-synchronized soundtrack to The Equestrian Vortex, a tale of witchcraft and murder set inside an all-girl riding academy. As he goes about his work on the unexpectedly terrifying project, it's his own mind that holds the real horrors. As the line between film and reality blurs, is Gilderoy working on a film -- or in one?

Play trailer2:05

1 Video

91 Photos

Drama Horror Thriller

A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.2/10

18K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 16 wins & 16 nominations

Videos1

Trailer 2:05

Watch Theatrical Trailer

Photos91

+ 85

More like this

6.2

6.5

5.8

7.0

6.9

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

6.1

Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp)

6.5

The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras

5.7

6.5

6.5

6.7

Berberian Sound Studio

Storyline

Edit

Did you know

Edit

Trivia
The title of the fictional studio refers to Cathy Berberian, the US soprano who married Luciano Berio, a pioneer of electronic music and a key influence on Strickland's film.

Goofs
At the very beginning of the film, Elena calls Francesco to announce Gilderoy's arrival at the studio. Although the film is set in Italy, when she picks up the phone a continuous dial tone is heard, which is normal for the US or UK; however, the actual dial tone would have sounded very differently in Italy, a country where the phone system has a very distinctive and non-continuous dial tone (consisting of a 425Hz tone with a duration of 0.6sec followed by a 1 second pause, followed by a 0.2 sec tone then a 0.2 sec pause, repeated in a loop until the first digit is dialed).

Quotes
Giancarlo Santini: Gilderoy, this is going to be a fantastic film. Brutal and honest. Nobody has seen this horror before.

Crazy credits
The opening credits are actually put together of those from The Equestrian Vortex, the fictional horror flick that's going to be post-dubbed in the movie, with fast-cut animations, medieval depictions of hell, demons, naves, animal skeletons and tortured female faces, mostly red and black colored.

Connections
Featured in MsMojo: Top 10 Scary Movies to Watch If You Hate Horror (2023)

Soundtracks
Dada X
Performed by Nurse With Wound
Written by Steven Stapleton
Licensed Courtesy of Nurse With Wound

User reviews98

Review

Featured review

3/10

A pretentious mess

'Berberian Sound Studio' is a film about an English sound technician (Toby Jones) who is used to creating sound effects for children's TV shows, who travels to Italy to work on a horror film. We follow him as he grows more and more homesick and as he gradually becomes hopeless.

There isn't much in the way of acting in this film but Toby Jones is a very talented actor and does perform well here. The other actors certainly are not poor, they give decent performances but none of them are particularly memorable.

The script is so basic and undeveloped you can practically see the writer shrug and say 'that'll do,' by the end. The first half hour is interesting because you get to see how sound effects are made and the whole dubbing process in general. After 30 minutes this gets tiresome however and I know it is supposed to be cyclical and seem never ending for Toby Jones, but it is so obscure you don't really care. When a film gets to the point where it thinks it's smarter than everyone else it becomes a pretentious mess, leaving you thinking they could have written that same concept with a more understandable and entertaining script. It deliberately tries to confuse you by adding pointless scenes here and there but in the end you realise the film only lasted an hour and a half but seems to last three hours.

Overall, this was quite disappointing. I really wanted to like this film; I had read so many great reviews on it and was looking forward to seeing it. Unfortunately it made me question the judgement of so many film critics that I follow.