The Vibrant Deathscapes in ‘Sound of Violence’ [Spins and Needles]
R.C. Jara
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From the opening scene, Alex Noyer’s Sound of Violence carves its own path in the renewed art of slasher storytelling. The film dives head-first into the waking nightmares of Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown), a synesthete and multi-instrumentalist navigating hearing loss amidst an artistic breakthrough. Her trauma, like her work, is an amalgam of tragic experiences. As a child she suffers an accident that happens off-screen. In the immediate, she witnesses the murder of her entire family by her father, a veteran suffering from PTSD. The scene is cruel in its implications and execution. Armed with a mixer, Alexis pursues increasingly destructive outlets to trigger euphoric responses to her condition.
While teaching a music class, Alexis describes beat-making as “human touch elevated to a language.” This romantic encapsulation of her passion is offset by the darkness of her past. Early in the film, a young Alexis cups her hands over the speakers in her mother’s car and on a boom box. Though she cannot hear the music, reverberations inspire bliss. Her moment is interrupted by literal sounds of violence as her family is hacked to pieces. Alexis, like many a slasher villain before her, picks up a weapon herself to complete this wicked circuit and kills her father. The killing is embellished by colorful flares that engulf the screen, brilliantly conjured up by cinematographer Daphne Qin Wu. These flares positively link her synesthesia with inducing pain onto others. In Noyer’s own words music becomes the weapon and the “flesh sounds” are music.
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With Sound of Violence, Brown occupies a space in this revitalized slasher movement as a fully-fledged killer icon. Her role as Alexis is one in a long line of bad guys for whom a damaging childhood unlocks the insatiable urge to reciprocate by violent means. The egocentric anguish that has plagued many a slasher villain is present within her. But what makes her an exceptional incarnation is that she is much better equipped to handle the harsh noise of life. Gone is the paranoid shut-in, the grindhouse/peep-show patron, the pining voyeur. Alexis wields a greater amount of control and lucidity. Brown hits all the right marks, communicating intent with her eyes and making a chilling display of Alexis’ reserved demeanor while digging into her background as a musician to imbue her character with a terrifying verisimilitude. Noyer’s own grasp of the experience of synesthetes gives the killings a functional logic.
In the article “Synesthesia and music perception”, synesthesia is observed in a variety of cognitive sciences. From early developmental stages, to its presence in people with significant loss of sight and hearing, the condition is fluid. More than 150 types of synesthesia have been identified and it is heavily idiosyncratic. The cross-modulation of stimuli (visualizing sounds, hearing in color for example) should not be seen as esoteric, however. Regarding music and its characteristics, “extramusical” descriptors are utilized constantly in order to articulate the effects a specific piece has on the listener. For an artist to make a whirlwind of emotions tactile involves consideration along these lines. Musical scores, for instance, can be interpreted to be inherently cross-modular. And where, if at all, is the music more effective than in a horror film?
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Music encompasses the whole identity of Noyer’s film and is a force that drives its most horrific set-pieces. The score is relatively understated. Alexander Burke, Omar El-Deeb, and Jaako Manninen compose the ethereal drones that comprise Alexis’s projects. However, Noyer relays the versatility of the mixer to a threatening degree. When she cannot get the desired effect from a recording session with a dominatrix and her sub, Alexis swiftly graduates to a Jigsaw-like pain modulator that tortures a homeless man at the push of a button.
Eschewing the industrial tones of Charlie Clouser’s score for the Saw films, the music in Sound of Violence blends softness with suffering ingeniously through the use of sinister percussive elements. Alexis’s mixer eclipses the coveted machete or butcher knife, acting as a tool for death and creation. And Marti D. Humphrey, whose staggering horror credentials include work with Sam Raimi, mixes sound in the film to a nauseating degree.
There are moments when Alexis struggles to consolidate her ambitions with the harm she causes, and Brown masterfully expresses the character’s exhaustion in her journey. A notable scene where Alexis is DJ-ing at a club catches her in an overwhelming mix of guilt and frustration. It’s difficult not to sympathize. But horror persists through her commitment to craft the perfect beat, which relies on killing as a byproduct of the overlying vision. Often exploitation cinema crosses the boundary of entertainment fodder to violently disrupt, and/or expose the rot beneath, real-world processes. In the case of Sound of Violence, Noyer achieves the former. By centering a horror film on the fascinating science behind synesthesia, the trials of artistic expression are taken to the extreme.
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As sensory artist Siana Altiise demonstrates, a crux of how synesthesia manifests is through the quieting of an oversaturated environment. The world is constantly vying for one’s attention and its attempts at doing so are distracting to an inner peace. Altiise uses her work, which is largely perceived through color, to visualize these internal stimuli for her audience. She builds two musical compositions, each layered with interlocking tones. The first composition is used to ease the audience into a state of calm. The second is projected on a digital sheet of music behind her. As she plays and vocalizes, colors appear and pulsate. It is transfixing. The experiment is successful because Altiise commands her surroundings to illustrate how she is able to sift through the noise in order to create. Hers is a delicate process of channeling that which provokes her artistic impulses.
Siana Altiise could likely have never anticipated that her sincere attempt at bridging the gap of sensory perception would be met with such a bizarre counterpart. Likewise, Alexis only shares superficial qualities with the artist. Despite their opposing methods, however, both she and Altiise strive for a meditative sound. It just so happens that Alexis learns to revel in the ambiance of death. And quieting moments for her, ironically, involve abrasive screams for help. Synesthesia sometimes manifests in the “mind’s eye,” guiding the synesthete through sensory patterns to construe their experience. As a horror audience, we may accept as part of the genre’s capacity for outlandishness that Alexis could rig a harp remotely to mangle its player. But what’s important is Alexis’s dual role as conductor and producer. Essentially fleshing out his own short film by the same name, Noyer illustrates the highs and lows of this power trip.
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Like any great slasher villain, the hunt is vital to Alexis. An aspect of her work is making use of fear and vulnerability as a precursor to pain. The skill of combining pain with musical experimentation is revealed to have been discovered by Alexis long before any formal training. Her obsession is innate. The ease with which she operates is unnerving but it’s effective because Noyer directs her almost as if she were the protagonist of a biopic. There is a reason for her madness. Alexis escalates to more visceral killings as she becomes less satisfied with the results. Tragically, the neural connections she was once able to make begin to fade.
By the end of Sound of Violence, when Alexis can no longer visualize her opus, she rushes to finish it. The law is closing in on her and she can no longer use bodies as instruments. Having tailored enough music for herself, she attempts to reach an audience of unsuspecting beachgoers. Her final exhibition is a grotesque fusion of meat and machine, grafting speakers onto her doomed roommate to create an amplifier for her work. The finale is heartbreaking and complicated. Alexis is a haunted artist bound to a passion that brushes past catharsis without ever truly grasping it. No amount of exploding heads or busted kneecaps can fill the void. It is a bitter send-off, but one that leaves room for an encore.
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