PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Cicadas. They freak me out. Seriously, what purpose do they serve other than to live short lives, look alien, leave their creepy-ass pupal skins everywhere, and make a racket? I’m surprised that there isn’t a more vibrant cicada horror sub-genre dedicated to the ugly little bastards. But, outside of The Beast Within, there’s very few entries…
Synopsis for The Sound of Summer:
In the relentless heat of the grueling summer, temperatures soar to blistering levels as cicadas emerge to sing their ear-shattering song. Months of continued exposure is enough to make anyone start to feel a little off. Anyone, that is, except that oddity the locals call The Cicada Man. Who is that strange man and why is he always walking around with boxes full of live cicadas? More important, what does he do with them? As the heat starts to get to our heroine, and her sanity depletes, real life and delusion begin to mix.
The Sound of Summer is a nasty, claustrophobic little nightmare from the cryptically named director, Guy (Difficulty Breathing). The film stars beautiful Japanese ctress Kaori Hoshino as the protagonist, an aspiring singer who works at a local coffee/diner/record shop, and goes about her lonely, solitary existence during a particular hot Japanese summer. Her usual routine is broken, however, when a mysterious, sweaty, masked stranger, The Cicada Man (Shinya Hankawa), comes into the shop with a cage full of live cicadas and a sinister purpose.
The viewer is then plunged headlong into the doomed protagonist’s descent into madness as she comes to believe that she is somehow infected with the insects. Her doctor (Keita Kusaka) is convinced that she’s delusional, and her fragile mental state soon fissures worse than her skin as she is drawn into a final conclusion/transformation that will make some of the most hardened horrorphiles’ skin crawl!
Borrowing equally from Polanski’s Repulsion and the gonzo body horror of classic Cronenberg, The Sound of Summer is an unflinching look at someone spiraling into a world of delusion, paranoia and self-mutilation. Subtitled and told without character names, the film incorporates facets of Japanese culture that are foreign to most Westerners (who knew netting and collecting live cicadas was thing?).
The Sound of Summer delivers a psychological gut punch to the viewer and doesn’t rely too much on the gross out factor until the very end. Strange, hallucinatory set pieces are used to great effect to immerse the audience into the dark reaches of our protagonist’s psyche. While some of dialogue seems a little clunky, this could be due to the subtitles. The film makes a visceral impact, and invokes a Carpenter-esque sense of impending doom throughout most of its running time.
The effects range from the suitably subtle, and ratchet up to the “WTF?” of the shockingly grotesque last act, which tracks well with the methodical, workman-like storytelling. And they avoided the “bug rape” and over-the-top bladder effects of the above mentioned The Beast Within (that flick still creeps me out, man…), so kudos for a creature that actually screams, “Cicada!”
As much creature feature as it is psychological horror, The Sound of Summer manages to break through any perceived language/cultural barriers, and serves up a hot, sweaty, nasty little piece of bug-infused nightmare fuel.
Now, where did I leave that can of Raid…
The Sound of Summer is available now from Unearthed Films.
