The Cicada Man is coming for YOU!

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

In the relentless heat of the gruelling 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. Her darkest nightmares seep into our world and she fears the Cicada Man has planted his swarm of insects inside her. She must get them out – at all costs. Thus begins her downward spiral into extreme paranoia and self-mutilation. She just needs to make it through the summer.

FROM THE CRITICS:

“THE SOUND OF SUMMER is a potent slow-burning mixture of body and insect horror with a seething side of sonic torment and pulsating effects work.” – Richard Taylor, Severed Cinema

“Like with his incredible short, DIFFICULTY BREATHING, Guy has a phenomenal and original approach to both vision and audio. He has a natural instinct for putting together images and sounds that grind an audience into submission. This is a truly visceral, gut-punching experience. Building and building before exploding in cicadas and purple-tinted gore.” – Dave Jackson, Letterboxed

Audio: This release comes with one audio option, an LPCM stereo mix in Japanese with removable English subtitles. Dialog comes through clearly, ambient sounds are well-represented, and everything sounds balanced. A lot of attention went into THE SOUND OF SUMMER’s sound design, and range-wise, this track does a great job showcasing it.

Extras: Extras for this release include a trailer for THE SOUND OF SUMMER (1 minute 47 seconds, LPCM stereo Japanese with non-removable English subtitles), a trailer for DIFFICULTY BREATHING, also directed by Guy (41 seconds, LPCM stereo Japanese with non-removable English subtitles), a featurette titled Japanese Premiere (42 minutes 26 seconds, LPCM stereo Japanese with non-removable English subtitles), a Behind the Scenes featurette (45 minutes 19 seconds, LPCM stereo Japanese with non-removable English subtitles), and a Q&A titled Tokyo Talkshow with the creators of The Sound of Summer, Loud and legendary director Shozin Fukui (33 minutes 41 seconds, LPCM stereo Japanese with non-removable English subtitles).

Fun fact: THE SOUND OF SUMMER was directed by a British-born filmmaker (Guy) who resides in Japan and is fluent in Japanese. Guy is known for THE ROPE MAIDEN (2013), DIFFICULTY BREATHING (2017) and UNKO-HI (2018).