Written and directed by Alex Noyer
Starring Jasmin Savoy Brown, Lili Simmons, James Jagger
1 hour 34 minutes
Unrated - violence and language

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Alex Noyer’s Sound of Violence begins with a jolt of, well, it’s right there in the title. It’s 2002, and a young girl named Alexis (Kamia Benge) is preparing to see her dad (Wes McGee), who has just returned from war in (presumably) Afghanistan. While he was gone, 10-year-old Alexis lost her hearing. Alexis and her mother use sign language with each other. Alexis’s father is experiencing PTSD. He snaps at Alexis at the dinner table. She screams back, “I can’t hear you!” Alexis later retreats to her room. Although she is deaf, later in the evening, she feels a rhythmic thumping in the floor. She follows the thumping along the walls of the hallway and into the living room. She witnesses a gruesome murder, and picks up a metal mallet to hit the murderer on the head, killing him. At that moment, Alexis starts to see colors. Swirls of red and blue light dance before her eyes. It’s like watching sunlight hit a prism over and over. She feels euphoric. She feels happy. And most importantly, her hearing returns. It’s a brutal scene, and Kamia Benge commands ths scene wonderfully.

Sound of Violence is an original story that starts out promising, with gruesome makeup effects, but it derails into a standard slasher. It doesn’t know what it wants to say about trauma and grief, so it decides to say nothing, but it does provide some memorable, albeit grotesque, kills. Eighteen-ish years later, we meet Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown, The Leftovers) a music student in her 20s who likes to experiment with new sounds and beats. Alexis and her best friend Marie (Lili Simmons, Bone Tomahawk) work on recording sounds together. They pay a dominatrix $100 to whip her sub, trying to capture each snap and crack. But he’s being pushed past his threshold as Alexis insists they continue. She starts to see the colors again, but she has started to intermittently lose her hearing as well. So she starts to chase that feeling.

But why? Is it because she’s addicted to the response, or because she wants her hearing back? The film has some plot holes. I’m willing to believe that a young woman in her mid-20s is exceptionally smart and clever. I’m less willing to believe she has the ability to leave one of her murder scenes spotless shortly after a kill. Or that she can overcome anyone, even if she manages to drug them. She fashions together an elaborate Saw-type torture device. So is she also an engineer? It appears so, but it’s never explained. Was there elaborate planning going on? If so, we never see any of it. The film also leaves a big gap with its brutal opening scene. She also has an older brother, but tells people her whole family was murdered. Did young Alexis do it? And how could she overtake him? Is Alexis just pure evil? She never talks with anyone about the traumatic experience from her childhood. Everyone knows about it, but it’s glossed over. Only that, for some reason, she inherited a large garage unit Ideal for luring and killing people.

Sound of Violence could have been more. The pieces are there. Jasmin Savoy Brown appears to be a capable actor, but as Alexis, she is wooden. When someone sees blood leaking from her RV where she lives (also conveniently inherited), she responds with flat line delivery: “I wish you would not have seen that.” What if she were more sympathetic, or if we explored more about what happened between the brutal childhood incident and now? The film isn’t helped any by a cop investigating the case of the murders (Sonya Fuentes). We know who did it. Why do we need to follow someone as they find out? Those scenes are a waste of time. A scene involving a harpist and a lot of blood is sure to be one to remember, but Sound of Violence ultimately comes up short.