Noise, the review: what is all this noise about?

Noise’s review: olive atmospheres but little bite for the psychological thriller directed by Belgian Steffen Geypens. Streamed on Netflix.

Where would you like to end up with? Noise? We asked ourselves this too, letting ourselves be carried away by the olive hues of the film directed by Belgian Steffen Geypens. However, before going into the review, a quick digression: it must be said that streaming allows us to open a window on foreign productions, whether they are not only the US, British or French ones, which have always been leaders in the industry, especially here in Italy. In this case the prerogative of Netflix is clear and commendable: addressing genres, mixing and adapting them according to the country of origin. All good, all interesting. But then the development, the writing, the staging come into play. And originality ends up giving way to brands, common moods, formatted aesthetics (photography is one of the copy-and-paste elements of many Netflix Moviesas if they were part of the same franchise).

Therefore, the usual good intentions end up fraying in function of a dispassionate and unfortunately not very effective vision. It is the case of Noise? Partly yes, partly no. In a certain sense we are attracted by the disturbing trip that binds the events, but after the beginning of the film we also end up realizing that the value of the story, obligatory when the psychological thriller is at stake, is lost. He gets stuck in a horrific roundabout as an end in itself, while the director raises the decibels of anxiety through those noises that give the film its title: the incessant crying of a child, a music box, a chewed fruit, the thud of a butcher’s cleaver. Even the whistling of birds. A cosmos that would like to screech – and it succeeds, because the sound design is remarkable – but which, precisely because of its exasperation, tends to shift attention from the characters towards the general context, causing the vision to be little depth.

Noise, the plot of the film

Right, Noise is clearly designed to explode (literally) in the last half hour. An explosion that brings with it a couple of cliffhangers immediately made up for by a twist, quickly flowing towards the final plot-twist. In short, even here: there is a certain schematic typical of similar operations, which make viewing comfortable in some ways. Nothing challenging, nothing cerebral, nothing intricate. We can say that the writing of Noise it serves its purpose: to entertain. But let’s start with the plot. The protagonist is Matthias (Ward Kerremans), new father and husband of Liv (Sallie Harmsen). Matthias He’s an influencer, or so it seems, while his wife is a restaurateur. They would like to take time off, get away from the city.

So, all three move to the old family home in the Belgian countryside, owned by his father, afflicted with senile dementia and closed in a nursing home, located not too far from the beautiful but dusty villa. Soon, the short circuit: Liv and Matthias struggle to adapt, something is wrong, and the baby won’t stop crying. Not only that, the man discovers that a disturbing accident took place in the family business years earlier. This prompts Matthias to investigate, seeing the possibility of “content” for his followers. However, he will remain entangled in the story, so much so that he begins to lose the light of reason. Research becomes obsession, and with obsession come visions and hallucinations, which will bring Matthias to the edge of the abyss.

The 80 best movies to watch on Netflix

A psychological thriller about paternal postpartum depression?

So what happened? We don’t tell you: Noise it’s a film that follows a psychological investigation, with those noises that raise the levels of the transfigured obsession on the face for the protagonist (it won’t be unforgettable, but it’s a good stylistic intuition). It is the sound that attracts attention, directs moods, follows the twists and turns of a story which – as we suggest – loses its bite when the action stops in a repetitive and not very stimulating staging. Or rather, the stimulus and interest are proportional to our participation and implication threshold, towards a character who exacerbates the concept of stress.

In the end, Noise could also be read as a film about paternal postpartum depression: a man pours his past and present traumas into a nightmare that turns into reality, trying to (dis)escape from those noises that haunt him, and perhaps to escape from the same empathetic and paternal propensity, as he is the son of a man who – at times – no longer remembers who he is, lashed by a past who has returned to ask for the bill. An alternative key to reading (or, if you like, a sought-after originality foothold), which we are trying to illuminate within a work with a bristly flavor, apparently devoid of the right lucidity of action and writing, consumed by time necessary for assimilation and digestion. That’s all? Well, in the era dominated by (many) disposable visions, it could even turn out Enough.