nother entry to chalk up in the neo-giallo wave currently being led by Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor, this also flips the misogynistic precepts of the genre – in this case making the murderous point of view very much female. Kamia Benge plays music student Alexis, a young deaf girl who is far from being traumatised by an incident of terrible violence in her home, and instead finds that a meat tenderiser’s squelchy impact causes her to see a constellation of hallucinogenic lights – along presumably all the feels. Years later, her hearing returned, Alexis (now played by Jasmin Savoy Brown) and fellow student Marie (Lili Simmons) are recording in an S&M dungeon when the flesh-strikes start tickling her dormant synaesthesia – and she tries pushing the gimp beyond his limits. Out walking one night on a break from her music, Alexis shoves a street harasser in front of an SUV – causing a full-on multi-coloured synaptic big bang. Sensing the possibilities, this uncompromising avant-gardist decides to take her musically motivated pain infliction much further, giving new meaning to the term sick beats. While outwardly revisionist, Sound of Violence – directed by Alex Noyer in his feature debut – remains absolutely faithful to giallo tradition, in taking a crass and borderline ludicrous premise and pushing it to lurid ends. The film isn’t feminist in any meaningful sense and, though Alexis is mixed-race and likes using Amazing Grace as sound test material, not really political either. Advertisement But, as expressed in the rising crescendo of highly inventive murders (or perhaps instrumentalisations is a better word), Noyer has a clear interest in the roots of art in trauma. Alexis’s compositions, which we hear for a short burst when she plays them to her horrified classmates, are disturbing and unlike most fictional creative works, actually credible on their own terms. The overall scenario doesn’t bear much scrutiny though: the script flounders in making Alexis’s transition to crazed maverick plausible, and the ensuing police investigation is faintly risible. But there are audible strains of mad genius here all the same.