Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)

This is cinephile fetishism on several levels: filmmakers can relish the vintage equipment on display while horror buffs can take delight in what is also an homage to the Italian Catholicism and gore productions that produced the likes of Dario Argento. It's pointedly lo-fi, right down to the script, without actually being that at all. Toby Jones's Churchill Insurance hangdog face is an ideal canvas on which to paint indignation, prurience and disorientation as he gets bullied into sound engineering for a ghastly picture that we never see, but might as well have done as it's perfectly evoked through increasingly twisted recording sessions. In essence, it's a paean to the contaminating effects of film production, and as such probably somewhat exclusionary towards outsiders in that aspect, but there is nevertheless a lot more to take out of it as it functions as a psychological horror film independently of its layers of allusion.

7/10