Room Tone
2023 · 9m · United States
Directed by Michael Gabriele
Genres: dark comedy, horror
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
When a sound guy's attempt to capture "room tone" is constantly thwarted by his noisy coworkers, he takes extreme measures to achieve silence.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A sound guy's descent into sonic terrorism should be ridiculous—and it is—but Gabriele commits so hard to the absurdist logic that it becomes genuinely unhinged; it's the kind of premise that makes you laugh and then immediately feel wrong about laughing.
Gabriele walks a formal tightrope between Buñuelian escalation and workplace comedy, and the film's control over tone—the way it modulates from irritation to dread without losing its dark humor—suggests a director thinking deliberately about genre architecture.
The decision to make room tone itself the protagonist's obsession transforms what could be a one-joke premise into something with real psychological teeth; it's all in how Gabriele trusts the audience to understand that silence, in a sound film, is the scariest thing of all.
Reviews
A darkly hilarious blast of a horror comedy about a sound guy who psychotically flips his shit because he can't get everyone on set to stay quiet as he attempts to get room tone. An absolute twisted hoot and a half!