Review: cycles of trauma in ‘Sound of Violence’

Tortured artists, from poets to lyricists to painters, have long forged their misery and trauma into great works of art. Such pained expression springs forth from wanting to heal but to also be seen and fully realized. In Alex Noyer’s directorial feature debut, Sound of Violence, Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) uses childhood trauma as a conduit to self-expression — literally exchanging the murder of her family by inflicting pain on others and thus conjuring up some bangin’ club music. Her specialty is electronica, the kind of euphoric blend of synthetic textures that give way to elation and true liberation on the dance floor.

Alexis, who lost her hearing from a freak accident, witnesses the horrific murder of her mother and brother at the hands of her father, riddled with PTSD from war. Then a young girl, she is faced with a life or death decision: kill her father or risk being just another statistic. She chooses the former, picking up a meat hammer and clubbing him to death. Many years later, we find Alexis, who’s now regained her hearing, is now a promising young DJ and teacher’s assistant; she’s astute, commanding, and disarming. Nothing seems to be amiss until she mounts an avant-garde art project, in which she uses everyday sounds to layer into experimental dance tracks, and her trauma creeps back into her life. You never know when, how, or why trauma might sneaks up on you, and Alexis fails to read or even acknowledge the warning signs. When she and her friend Marie (Lili Simmons) enlist two dominatrixes for their time, grafting sounds of leather whips on bare flesh, Alexis pushes her test subjects to the limits — and a wickedness flashes in her eyes, a deep craving for pain.

It’s the birth of a monster, who quickly initiates a cycle of abuse of her own. When left untested and untreated, trauma frequently transforms into vicious patterns that wreak havoc and destroy relationships. Her friendship with Marie has always been a little bit more, and she waxes brilliantly envious when Marie begins a new romance with Duke (James Jagger). Following a night out, a quite inebriated Alexis stumbles her way home when a young man aggressively hits on her. Alexis shoves him away, and he staggers into the street, getting hit by an oncoming vehicle. The impact elicits an adrenaline high for Alexis, who, as we learn, possesses a special gift of seeing sounds in colorful streams and patterns. Her discovery, that perhaps there is beautiful melodies in physical mutilation, instigates a slippery slope, provoking her down a dark, treacherous path of re-victimization.

There’s no turning back for Alexis. In her desperation to craft the perfect, most visceral track — of which she shares an early draft with her music theory class, much to their horror — she seeks out unwilling specimens for her sick demonstration. From a homeless man, who she hooks into a Saw-like contraption, to a local singer looking for fame, Alexis wracks up plenty of bodies, each bloody exhibit as disturbing as the last. In one of the film’s most fascinatingly grim sequences, Alexis drugs a harpist during an art opening into disfiguring her fingers and face against the harp’s metallic strings, prompting blood to spurt along the floor. The congregating audience whip out their phones, interpreting the grisly imagery to be part of some warped performance piece. People scream but don’t do anything to help. Much like art consumers these days (literally anyone who listens to music or watches films, for example), they are merely vultures of pain, consuming and swallowing it down to nurture their own sadistic tendencies. We digest and spit up, too. The modern world is a smorgasbord of anguish, desperation, sorrow, and anger, funneled back into the entertainment for easy access.

Sound of Violence is rough around the edges sometimes, but Brown’s performance is irresistibly unsettling. As one of the stars in the forthcoming Scream, coming in 2022, she demonstrates stunning superstar potential. Alexis’ murderous rampage eventually catches up to her, but not before her bloodlust causes irreparable damage to those she loves most — leading up to one of the most unnerving finales of any film this year.

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