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Overall Rating : 5.5/10
Directed By : Brad Anderson
Chris Bauer (Flags of Our Fathers)
Michael Daingerfield (Dreamcatcher)
Richard Kahan (The 4400 (TV) )
Laura Margolis
Supplied By : Starz! Media
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : Nov. 15, 2006
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| PLOT Quality control supervisor Larry Pearce spends his days monitoring the nuances of his tech support staff’s telephone conversations… listening is his life. However, when grief over his son’s death leads to a supernaturally heightened sense of sound, Larry is forced to take violent action to silence the horrific cacophony in his head. |
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| THE REVIEW In this episode of MASTERS OF HORROR entitled SOUNDS LIKE we meet Larry, a Quality Control Supervisor. Larry Pearce works at a software company and it is his job to monitor the tech support calls that come in, and make sure that the technicians treat the customers with courtesy when solving their problems. Listen is what he does all day, but that is also what would lead to his downfall. Larry and his wife, Brenda have just recently lost their son due to heart complications and in his time of grieving Larry has seemingly picked up a heightened sense of sound - he hears everything that we do, times that by say 10. At first, Pearce seems to be able to control this, although something as little as a fly on the wall would bother him. As days go by, we watch as Larry's tolerance to the heightened sound decreases, he becomes more erratic at work in which he takes it out on everyone in sight - he returns home and Brenda (whom is still grieving) becomes an even bigger annoyance for him. By the episode's end - we see a man, who has lost all sense of himself and someone who has let his problem rule him as he stops at nothing to silence the noise that surrounds him. Well, here is an episode from Brad Anderson that is a different kind of episode, I say that because it is not your general Horror tale, but rather one more psychological and mind-bending. We are introduced to a character, that just like any everyday person has a job that they do not like, but Larry Pearce has more than one reason not to and one is all of the noise! While watching SOUNDS LIKE, we sense that Larry is really a nice guy truthfully but it is his unwanted power of heightened hearing that makes him into the grouch that everyone around him knows him to be - this is not whom Larry wants to be, but he is caught in a struggle with himself that he cannot control. Anderson does a great job telling the story at a medial pace, progressively showing the decline of an individual. In this episode, sound is the enemy as it begins to eat away at the mind of Larry until he just can't take anymore and it begins to effect everything in his life, even the relationship with his wife and the memory of his young deceased child, the feeling delivered here is classically claustrophobic as we are brought into the mind, and witness the breakdown of Larry as it happens. In the end, SOUNDS LIKE is a great episode for the ones who like a little thinking in their Horror movies, and not so much just gore. To me, it was nice to see something a little different this time, as many of last season's episodes were built around special effects and shock. |
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| GORE
METER 4.5/10 Believe it or not, as I eluded to earlier, this wa one of the more tame episodes as far as gore is concerned. We do get a cadaver with a face filled with maggots and blood and a lot of blood in general. |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 5/10 The score gave a sense of panic and hysterics and did a great job setting the tone, as it changed with the mood of Larry Pearce, when he would panic so would the music by becoming more and more frantic. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM SOUNDS LIKE from Brad Anderson is a very good episode, that is every bit supernatural than it is Horror. I really enjoyed it, and I would have rated it higher had the origin of Larry's heightened sense of sound been explained more in-depth, we assume that he gained it from the death of his son(I suppose), but I am still a little uncertain as to how it was acquired. Other than that, SOUNDS LIKE. is yet another solid entry into the acclaimed MASTERS OF HORROR series, be sure to check it out this Friday on SHOWTIME! This Episode will air on November 17, 2006 on SHOWTIME |
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