Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

British sound engineer Gilderoy (Toby Jones) arrives at the Berberian film studio in Italy to work on what he believes is a film about horses. During a surreal meeting with Francesco, the film's producer, Gilderoy is shocked to find the film is actually an Italian giallo film, The Equestrian Vortex. He nonetheless begins work in the studio, at one point made to do Foley work, using vegetables to create sound effects for the film's increasingly gory torture sequences, and mixing voiceovers from session artists Silvia and Claudia into the score.

As time passes, and Gilderoy feels more and more disconnected from his mother at home, he begins to fear he is out of his depth. Gilderoy's colleagues seem increasingly rude—to both himself and to each other. The horror sequences grow ever more shocking, yet Santini, the director, refuses to admit they are working on a horror film. And, after a long passage through the bureaucracy of the film studio's accounts department, it turns out the plane ticket Gilderoy submitted for a refund can't be processed because the flight did not actually exist.

The plot, from here on in, grows increasingly erratic. Gilderoy hears and sees things in the night. He discovers that Silvia, the voiceover artist, was molested by Santini. She storms out, destroying much of their work, forcing Gilderoy to re-record the dialogue with a new actress, Elisa. As Silvia's recording sequences are revisited, and tension grows between Gilderoy and the others, the boundaries between the blood-drenched giallo thriller and real life begin to erode. Gilderoy imagines he himself is in a film about his life—suddenly fluent in Italian and increasingly detached and vicious.

After he and Francesco find Elisa's screams less than adequate during a recording session, Gilderoy volunteers to torture her with dissonant and shrill sounds in order to elicit the perfect scream. Instead, she walks out, and it is left ambiguous whether he was attempting to hurt her out of malice or secretly trying to drive her away and prevent history from repeating itself. In a final shot, during a power cut, Gilderoy turns on the movie projector, creating an incandescent light on the screen which absorbs him before the films cuts to black.