When horror movies could no longer top themselves in terms of gross-out imagery and the split-second timing of jump scares, filmmakers had to think of newer ways to frighten us. As one solution, they’ve mostly replaced the visceral with the suggestive, and this Italian low-budget feature, directed by three horror buffs who go by the collective moniker T3, hits on pure sound as a means of getting its creep on. In that regard, it has to work overtime to make any kind of impression compared to A Quiet Place, which it very much resembles in terms of concept, though the sound design by itself is more inventive.

A wannabe singer named Emma (Penelope Sangiorgi)—according to her boyfriend, Seba (Rocco Marazzita), “the next Ariana Grande”—is summoned home to Italy from New York after her parents are involved in an accident. When she arrives she learns that her father (Peter Stephen Wolmarans) is in the ICU after being pushed down the stairs by her mother (Sandra Pizzullo), who is also hospitalized for observation. The doctor suspects that the mother was defending herself during a domestic violence dispute, and she admits to her daughter that her father did attack her, “but it wasn’t him.” Emma and Seba repair to the family home by themselves where the former finds an odd antique radio in her father’s amateur sound studio—the place where she learned how to sing. Left alone while Seba goes out to pick up food, she turns on the radio and hears odd voices that often increase in volume suddenly, and when that happens…

T3 don’t pursue the usual suspense cycles that characterize modern horror. Instead, they use shadows and dim, fleeting peripheral images to intensify their unsettling sound effects, and as the movie progresses the viewer learns the logic behind the scares and what they represent. The mystery at the heart of the movie isn’t original enough to make up for the bad acting, but the unease created as it unfolds has a cumulative power that’s eventually squandered by a pat climax, which turns out to be not even a climax, because there is a ten-minute coda where it appears the directors want to recreate the same horror concept in a visual context, perhaps for their next movie? Can’t say it was intriguing enough that I would look forward to it.

In English and Italian. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645).

Sound of Silence home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 T3 Directors SRL