Equinox

Equinox is an upcoming Netflix mini-series that is cut from a similar cloth to Stranger Things or Dark, subtracting the 80s nostalgia and adding some Nordic flair. The tagline—“there’s another reality behind the one we’re living in”—is certainly evocative of the aforementioned series. With Tea Lindeburg directing, it promises to be a bit more subtle, with the trailer’s sound design confirming that.

Sonically at least, the trailer reminds us of another Netflix exclusive, Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, in the sense of taking ordinary sounds and rendering them in a vaguely musical and undeniably disturbing way. Right away, we’re squarely focused on the voice of Astrid (Danica Curcic) as she works on a call-in radio show. Suddenly, a caller informs Astrid of the aforementioned “other reality,” and the audioviewer becomes aware that the low fidelity, intermittently crackling voice may not just be the result of a telephone system, but some kind of ghostly, inter-dimensional distance instead.

A fear of the unseen is a classic trope in horror and sci-fi, so much so that Michael Chion coined the term acousmêtre—a neologism for the time, denoting an “acousmatic being”—to account for the phenomenon in cinema of a character whose power is derived from withholding a presence on the screen and is instead only heard. Sure enough, Jacob’s words seem not to acknowledge Astrid’s growing unease and increasingly frantic questioning whatsoever, and we never do see him.

Starting at 0:41 we hear a heartbeat synched with the sound of a busy tone for a dial-up phone. This leads to a montage sequence where this synched sound gradually increases in tempo, along with a rising glissando in the strings. While this occurs we are given a montage sequence with highly unusual imagery from the show, perhaps depicting the other dimension alluded to. Static tones add to the cacophonous fray, before finally cutting out at 1:11 along with the screen, where we experience an omission of both sight and sound concurrently.

This leads to an uninterrupted and unadorned busy signal as an (unusually) animated logo appears. Note how it gets unceremoniously and abruptly cut off at 1:12—while subtle, it further suggests a lack of control or a sense of powerlessness against unknown forces.

The resuscitation of the busy tone works on multiple levels. Most obviously, the point of connection with the mysterious being is through a phone call. Less obvious is the notion that the tone is memorable and identifiable, and also probably has not been heard in the original context by the audioviewer in some time. The sound itself is a vestige of another era. It is both familiar and strange, inflexible and insistent. Re-contextualized like this, it’s even unnerving.

Equinox arrives as a six-part series on Netflix December 30th.

— Curtis Perry