It is a lot easier to close your eyes than to close your ears. Ironically,
in this case, Joo-young’s hearing aid finally represents an advantage. She has
so much underdog cred (working a blue-collar factory job, with her hearing impairment),
Joo-young looks like a natural “final girl” candidate. Regardless, finding her
semi-estranged sister will be her primary goal in Kim Soo-jin’s Noise,
which screens tonight as part of Scary Movies XIII.
Joo-young
briefly lived with Joo-hee, but she tired of her sibling’s erratic behavior, so
she moved out—right before things really got weird. According to the cops,
Joo-hee has been missing for weeks. Yet, as soon as Joo-young moves back in,
the crazy neighbor below complains of the constant noise coming from their empty
apartment. This noise-rage taps into reportedly common Korean complaints,
stemming from high population density and cheap concrete construction. Such inter-building
noise is less of an issue here in New York. That’s why we love our “pre-war”
buildings.
Indeed,
the brutalist apartment complex is rife with weird, disconcerting noises. Even
Joo-young can hear them when her hearing aid is turned on. Joo-hee’s boyfriend,
Ki-hoon, does not have that option, but he doesn’t understand the degree of the
audio distortion he will have to contend with when he offers to help Joo-young
find her sister.
Rather
cleverly, the FSLC paired Noise with the similarly audio-themed Rabbit Trap for their press screenings, but the public screenings fell on
different days. Maybe that is just as well, because the two films together
constitute an exhausting sensory overload. However, that also means both sound
teams did some incredibly potent work.
Kim
also cleverly capitalizes on Joo-young’s reliance on voice recognition apps and
her on-and-off hearing aid to cleverly build suspense. Yet, despite a vibe and
style clearly inspired by classic J-horror and K-horror, screenwriter Lee
Je-hui maintains a coyness whether the film is supernatural horror, or a
devious murder mystery of human origins and design. Either way, there are some
deeply unnerving moments, thanks in large measure to the sinister sound.
Daphne Davenport was on pace to become another Laurie Anderson or Naim June Paik.
She describes her concrete-adjacent electronic-distorted found music as “influential”
rather than popular. Unfortunately, true fame will probably elude her, because
she is a character in a horror film. She hoped to discover some inspiring natural
sounds with her recording engineer husband Darcy, but they also find a sinister
wild child in director-screenwriter Bryn Chainey’s Rabbit Trap, produced
by SpectreVision, which screens tonight as part of Scary Movies XIII.
Daphne
is the “artiste” and Darcy is her enabler. He spends hours doing the legwork, roaming
the Welsh moors, making field recordings of squishy-squashy natural noises,
which she samples into her industrial soundscapes. It is a reclusive life, but
apparently, they needed to get away from the London scene. They are also clearly
carrying a lot of baggage that they never discuss, but it comes to a boil when
the kid shows up.
Even
the Da-Da’s notice how cagily their visitor remains nameless. However, the wild
child brims with knowledge regarding the local animals and flora. The strange youngster
even seems to have a special connection to the rabbits, especially the dead ones.
Indeed, the nature child should remind Nat Kind Cole fans that “Nature Boy” is
actually an extremely creepy song. Yet, despite this squirreliness, Daphne
forges an unhealthy attachment to “the child,” which encourages not-so-subtle attempts
to undermine her marriage.
Soon, Darcy
starts freaking out over their little stalker’s behavior. He also passes out
and loses time after ill-advisedly walking into a fairy circle. Admittedly, the
little weirdo warned him not to do it, but he did so anyway, losing time and consciousness
as a result.
In some
ways, Rabbit Trap is like an Enys Men, flavored with an extract
of Blow Out, which makes it ten times more grounded. The folk horror runs
heavy in these parts. The atmosphere is thick and it has amazingly clear audio fidelity.
The grungy 1970s period details are also highly evocative. Frankly, this is a
world you wouldn’t want to visit, but it definitely sounds massively eerie.
