REVERB

UK, 2008, 88 minutes, Colour.
Leo Gregory, Eva Birthistle, Pamela Banks, Margot Stilley, Luke de Woolfson, Stephen Lord, Neil Newbon.
Directed by Eitan Arrusi.

There are ominous indications during the credits that this is going to be a slasher/horror film. However, it soon settles into a seemingly normal story of two people who work in a call centre and who have a past association with friends in a band which has now broken up. One of the friends does a favour and lets them go into a studio building over night so that Alex (Leo Gregory), the band leader, hopes to put down a track which will revive his inspiration and career. He goes with his friend, Maddy (a vigorous Eva Birthistle). While the situation has a touch of the eerie, it seems ordinary enough (despite bumps in the night).

However, the horror conventions begin to infiltrate, strange sounds in recordings, cries for help, incantations. Then Alex has some hallucinatory experiences and Maddy fears that there is going to be blood.

It helps if you have been in a recording studio and understand how some of the equipment works. (EMI Music participated in production.)

Writer-director, Eitan Arrusi, takes his plotline from those suspicions of the past (and present?): that there are evil words hidden in some recordings, evil power, and that satanic messages can be heard when a song is played backwards. He creates a strange musician from the 1970s, showing him in a grim video that he made at the time, with part of a track, The Blood Room, which was meant to be played with the video. There is talk of dabbling in the occult and that old story of finding immortality after selling one's soul to live on in the music. Has the musician returned? Is he taking possession of Alex? How dangerous will this be for Maddy and two other friends who help out?

The film keeps its atmosphere, increasing the tension and using the conventions of this kind of horror to some chilling effect.

1.A horror film? The conventions? The exploitation of the genre – with the focus on the record industry?

2.The London settings, exteriors, the daylight? The contrast with the studios, the corridors, the basement, the dark?

3.The importance of music, the story, the background of bands, the 1970s, the issue of sinister lyrics in the recordings? Sinister sounds? The contemporary music industry? Studios?

4.The plausibility of the supernatural issue: the musician in the 1970s, his girlfriend, taping the records, the lyrics and their sinister tone? The touch of the satanic? His rituals? Murder? The sounds being incorporated into the recordings? The 21st century rediscovery, the words, the sounds, the music? The repetition? The musician taking over the 21st century musician?

5.Alex and Maddie, the band, their past relationship? Going to the studio? Their work at the call centre? Boring? Alex’s plan to do the recording, revive his career? Maddie helping?

6.In the studio, the ordinariness? The work? Wandering the corridors? Dan and his help, his past link with the band, letting them in, locking them in? The eeriness of some of the sounds, the music, the words?

7.Alex, his obsession, the return the next night? His being overpowered by Mark Griffin? His hallucinations? What was reality, what was imagination? Looking in the mirror? Mark Griffin appearing? Going down into the acoustic room? The basement? The re-enactment of the past?

8.Maddie, commonsensed? Her helping out, hearing the plea in the record? Matching the voice, finding it her own? Her returning, her fears, the pursuits? The threats? Mark Griffin, Alex and his being taken over? In the acoustic room? The rescue?

9.Mark Griffin, appearance, the recordings, his girlfriend? Deaths?

10.Dan, his help, his epilepsy, his seizure, his death?

11.Nicky, the clash with Alex, being persuaded to come to the studio, the performance, her death?

12.The researcher on music, his shop, coming to the studio, his death?

13.Familiar material – but with the 21st century musical twist?