After the death of his son, Larry's sense of hearing has taken on extraordinary capabilities. He can literary hear everything that goes on around him, and that would be enough to drive a man insane.
Brad Anderson's Sounds Like is a film that, just like Landis "Family" did, it focuses more on a disturbing story than on graphical horror. Anderson is a skilled director who really separates himself from most film-makers - and that makes his films tend to be very interesting. While writing this, I'm currently looking forward to his upcoming "Transsiberian", after having really enjoyed his previous efforts that were Session 9 and The Machinist. The man makes unique films, that for sure, and Sounds Like is no exception. While it might not deal with pure horror throughout, the very theme of the episode is still pretty horrific to say the least, and in the end I thought that the movie was most of all sad - but in a good way.
Larry has ultra-sensitive hearing - that means that he can hear all that goes on around him, but to the degree that it's close to driving him insane. While Sounds Like is more dramatic than it is horrific, it's still quite scary what the man has to suffer through when thinking about it. He could hear a cancer grow inside his son, and after that the little boy had passed, Larry never fully recuperated from the tragic event. He's working monitoring calls of the people who are trying to help callers out with their computer problems, and his newfound "power of hearing" is affecting his work. As the film keeps rolling, things just keeps getting worse for poor old Larry (played by Chris Bauer), and in the end it drives him insane.
 
I've heard some people complain about the fact that the film was too long, that it could've been cut down to half the running time and that the story didn't go anywhere at times. Personally, I don't agree with that at all, but I believe that all the time spent on Larry and the focus of how he hears everything is important for one to fully be able to feel with his character. I never thought that the film was slow, but obviously I wondered how it would all come to an end. I'm not sure if it really did it for me in the end though, but at least it was good enough and I found most of the film to be truly interesting and that you really could feel something for the character that was Larry and his situation. Not that you could relate to what the man had to go through, but just for the fact that you felt sorry for him.
Actually, the same thing happened when I watched Session 9 for the first time and that was that, just like Sounds Like, it had an awesome story going, was a bit creepy and most of all unpleasant, but how it all came to an end did not really make me go wow. That aside, this movie is quite different from most of the stuff you probably watch so it's well worth watching for that reason alone.
Obviously Sounds Like has a lot of sounds in it, and it's all done with great effect. Imagine that you can hear all that's going on around you, but turn the volume up a lot for each separate thing and try think about how what that would've been like.. hell I would imagine. The movie shows many examples of what I just wrote and it's all great to watch as well as it is quite unpleasant at times. Not really sure about the ending, but at least most of the episode proved to be very good. Recommended.
By
Back to Horror Review Archive
|
ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Sounds Like
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Brad Anderson
WRITING CREDITS: Brad Anderson, Mike O'Driscoll
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Chris Bauer, Laura Margolis, Richard Kahan
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 8/10
Masters of Horror (S02E04): Sounds Like Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E04): Sounds Like Trailer Click here
|
