3 gibbles out of 5

Director: Brad Anderson

A pretty solid Masters Of Horror entry, Brad Anderson’s “Sounds Like” is almost terrifyingly effective… until it runs out of story about halfway through and keeps repeating its main trick several times over before allowing us to get to the tale’s end.

So Larry (Chris Bauer) works at a tech company, monitoring customer service calls for efficiency.  We learn early on that his acute hearing helps him to scan calls quickly and identify problematic tones in his employees voices.  The extent of his hearing strength is then exemplified in his home life, where his wife’s every action and words grate upon his need for peace and quiet.  And Larry is breaking down: over the next few days his sensitivity to noise appears to grow worse and worse, with even the littlest motion or sound translating as explosions.  Anderson ups the use of sound to the max, such that we, as the viewer, are as on edge as Larry with each high pitch squeal or sudden ghastly noise.

In a nice change of style from the other MOH’s, Anderson doesn’t feel the need to up the gore for cable, playing his story slowly, giving us developing details as to the burden of Larry’s “gift” and the guilt that might’ve started him on his downward slope.  As Larry becomes more and more unnerved from sounds, it culminates in a night of him destroying lights and appliances in his home in order to get some quiet.

And then the story stalls.  We can sort of guess at the direction it’s going to take, and there’s not much story between here and there, so Anderson pops us through some more “sound is horrible” sequences before giving us a conclusion.  It’s an unfortunate letdown from a great beginning, acting as an annoying  extension for 20 minutes to bring the overall episode down in quality.