SOUND OF VIOLENCE
(director/writer: Alex Noyer; cinematographer: Daphne Qin Wu; editors: Hannu Aukia/ Vertti Virkajärvi; music: Alexander Burke/Jaakko Manninen/Omar-El Deeb; cast: Jasmin Savoy Brown (Alexis), Lili Simmons (Marie Sotker), James Jagger (Duke), Tessa Munro (Sonya Fuentes), Lola Davis (Dominatrix), Dana L. Wilson (Mrs. Reeves), Kamia Benge (Young Alexis), Wes Mcgee (Barry Reeves), Mataeo Mingo (Kevin Reeves), James Wellington (Fred), Hana Mae Lee (Maitreya), Chris Yong (attacker), Brian Huskey (Mr. Bell), Corsica Wilson (Officer Davis); Runtime: 95; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Alex Noyer/Hannu Aukia; Gravitas Ventures/You Know Films; 2021-Finland/USA-in English)
“Bloody giallo film.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Alex Noyer in his feature film debut after his short film “Conductor” is director and writer of this bloody giallo film, that makes no sense in its absurd premise and in the end disappointingly goes the conventional horror pic way leaving its chilling visuals as merely afterthoughts.
It’s about a mentally depraved mixed-race girl named Alexis, whose joy in living and source of music comes from causing pain to others and hears music in their suffering that her experiments record as her vics are being tortured and put to death.
Alexis (Kamia Benge) at ten was deaf as the result of an accident. When home for a family dinner she witnesses the brutal murder of her family–her returning from the war father (Wes Mcgee), her mother (Dana L. Wilson) and her brother (Mataeo Mingo)– and as a result of witnessing the violence regains her hearing. Sent to an orphanage, we next see her as a young adult (now played by Jasmin Savoy Brown, who gives a riveting performance) as a weirdo lesbian music student in college, where she works as a professor’s assistant, a freelance audio engineer and makes experimental music on devices she invents. Now equipped with the ability to experience synaesthesia (the phenomenon of experiencing one sense through another), she stays in her family’s renovated garage with the loving Marie (Lili Simmons), a supportive music major classmate, who is clueless about her roommate’s love for violent sounds and that she’s best friends with a psycho killer.
Alexis is fearful of losing her hearing again if she stops making killer music, as bodies start piling up. The dedicated city detective Sonya Fuentes (Tessa Munro) investigates looking for clues to catch the serial killer (a police investigation that was meant to be serious but was unintentionally funny).
The murders include: a homeless man tortured to death, a drunken male street attacker (Chris Yong) Alexis pushes in front of an SUV and has an acid trip kind of trippy color flashback, a record store clerk whose head is blown off while getting paid in an experiment to show-off his tenor voice while singing Amazing Grace when wired up, a harp player at an art gallery having her fingers explode because the strings were rigged and Marie’s boyfriend Duke (James Jagger) being brutally tortured to death for suspecting Alexis to be behind the harp player’s attack.
It’s a pointless and gross-out film, that might be strangely entertaining but not meant for the squeamish.
Played at the SXSW FILM FESTIVAL 2021.
REVIEWED ON 6/22/2022 GRADE: B-