‘Turn It Up!’ Review: Cosmic Horror/Comedy Mostly Hits The Right Notes [Tribeca]

“Chaos is movement.”

There’s a powerful connection between music and horror, whether it’s the pageantry that certain bands adopt that’s evocative of the genre, the casting of music legends in horror films, or the use of songs as some form of black magic ritual. There’s an increasing number of music-based horror films that blur the lines between these two worlds. Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem, Deathgasm, Studio 666, Hellbender, and Green Room all go in very different directions, yet they all touch upon music’s intrinsic ties to dark, unexplainable phenomena. Sam Scott’s Turn it Up! is a part of the same jam session. It’s a meditation on the power of sound and how the right combination of tones and melodies can be such a powerful experience that it generates a cosmic vibration that’s able to tear through reality.

Turn it Up! makes its case right from the jump, then conjures mounting dread as the band’s performance draws closer to this inevitable sonic apocalypse. It successfully hits these notes, but then uses them to play a completely original song that subverts expectations. All this pushes Turn it Up! in an exciting, unexpected direction that functions as a powerful parable about the hoops artists need to jump through in order to find success, even if that means losing their souls — figuratively and literally — in the process.

There are so many stories about the cost of fame and whether a quick fix to superstardom is ever worth it. It’s the perfect Faustian tale of temptation, one that’s particularly relevant in an influencer-forward world where there’s never been greater pressure to be trending. AC (Justine Nelson), the frontwoman of a flailing indie rock band, is a deeply repressed individual on the brink of shattering. She’s confronted with apathy and failure, making it all the harder to pine for a passion that seems to be slipping out of her grasp. Turn It Up! excels at tapping into the tedium and struggles of being in a floundering indie band on tour. It adeptly uses this as the backdrop for something much bigger.