The Sound of Summer Review from Sculpting Fragments!
Guy returns with his first full feature length film The Sound of Summer. A surprisingly complex tale of heat stroke inducing body horror that relies on the use of sound to stimulate the viewer.
Guy’s short film Difficulty Breathing was an original piece of material, and this follow up once again solidifies his penchant for offbeat and alarming tales of suffering and terror.
This Japanese indie film shines with both originality and a blissful offbeat style. Melding body horror with that atmospheric industrial music carnage. It develops a layer of rampant possibly hallucinating self destruction and eventually unfolds catapulting us at a breakneck speed towards the abruption of a conclusion.
The Sound of Summer focusses on a beautiful young lady simply known as the Protagonist (Kaori Hoshino). The woman goes about her day working at a coffee shop with her co worker (Kiyomi Kametani). The heat in the city during the summer is crippling and to make things worse the cicada bugs are rampant and making very loud buzzing sounds around this time of the year.
The young woman and her co-worker notice a bizarre man (Shinya Hankawa) in their coffee shop carrying containers holding cicada bugs including two hanging off his waist. The two women notice him in the coffee shop a second time and are weirded out by his strange demeanor and the numerous cicadas he brings with him by his side while buying coffee. They giggle amongst themselves about how creepy he is, and he seems to notice.
All the while the protagonist woman starts to become noticeably irritated more and more by the sounds of the bugs as the days go by. She is not resting well and visibly stressed out and tired. She seeks medical advice when she starts developing strange splotches resembling a rash on her skin.
The woman begins to isolate herself and her already frayed strings of sanity break. She is convinced the “Cicada Man” visited her one night and planted bugs inside of her. Is she going insane or is she delusional and paranoid? She is stressed and mesmerized consistently by the heatwave and the incessant calling of the cicada bugs which there is no reprieve.
Soon the rash turns into open wounds and the woman begins probing her orfices for inserted cicadas she believes were planted there by the old man. Another doctor visit results in nothing but disbelief and a prescription for useless medication to offset her supposed delusional condition.
The Sound of Summer benefits from grotesque effects work courtesy of Susumu Nakatani (Versus, Psycho=) which takes the self mutilation, exploding, and gaping open wounds to the next level of shock and uneasiness. The soundtrack is a digital fueled nightmare delivered by dark synth industrial composer Microchip Terror. The film is effective regardless, but that soundtrack brings it to new heights of discomfort. If you’re familiar with a morbidly humorous and ultra twisted little film called Cat Sick Blues (see review here) then you’ll be pleased to know the director of that movie Dave Jackson helped on this production.
The Sound of Summer is a strong and original feature film debut from Guy. The film is a potent slow burning mixture of body and insect horror with a seething side of sonic torment and pulsating effects work.
AKA: 夏バテ女
Directed by: Guy
Written by: Guy
Produced by: Guy
Edited by: Guy
Cinematography Guy
Special Effects by: Susumu Nakatani
Music by: Microchip Terror
Cast: Shinya Hankawa, Kaori Hoshino, Kiyomi Kametani, Shiori Kawai, Kuromi Kirishima, Keita Kusaka, Yuina Nagai
Year: 2022
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 15min
Studio: Sculpting Fragments
