Summary:
A young man tries to help a teenage European after she witnesses the murder of her parents.
My Thoughts:
Dario Argento (“Suspiria”, “Deep Red”) is my favorite horror director, but I’ll be the first one to admit that he has made some less-than-stellar films, and his films post-80s really start to drop off in terms of quality. That being said, as he’s my favorite horror director I’m trying to see all the films he’s made, and I really don’t care if I have to slough through some of the worst entries in his oeuvre, because even some of the worst entries has moments where Argento’s weird direction comes through. This film doesn’t work on a lot of levels (some might argue every level), but it still has a few moments of giallo goodness for me to cling to, and, as far as I know, this is the only time Argento and Brad Dourif (“Exorcist III: Legion”) have worked together (and I’m a huge fan of Dourif too).
Now, as much as I love Argento, he’s never really been able to write natural sounding dialogue (it’s particularly noticeable in English), and this film features all sorts of awkward dialogue, especially between our protagonists David (Christopher Rydell, “On Golden Pond”) and Aura (Asia Argento, “Mother of Tears”). David is supposed to be in his mid twenties while Aura is supposed to be a young teenager (she was actually eighteen when filming), and the two are supposed to have a bit of sexual tension between them. Not only is this an awkward romance to sort of shove down your audiences throats, it doesn’t even fit with the real context of the story; if Aura has just seen her parents murdered and is being chased by a serial killer, I feel like the last thing she’d have on her mind was hooking up with a college kid she just met. To make matters worse, Asia Argento, Dario’ daughter, probably got the part because of nepotism; she’s not a great actress, and the awkward dialogue makes some of the scenes even more uncomfortable to watch. As a side note, there’s also a completely unnecessary scene where David walks past a room and sees Aura changing, her shirt removed. The scene added nothing to the film overall; in fact it just made me feel more uncomfortable knowing Argento helped to write this movie, meaning he purposefully included a needless scene where he’d have to shoot his daughter topless. Ew. Gross.
The story in this film feels like an amalgam of many of Argento’s other films; helpless European teens, black-gloved killers, a crazy soundtrack (no Goblin on this movie, unfortunately), and the occasional far-fetched murder. I’ve seen enough of Argento’s films to know that something weird has to happen; maybe our protagonist stumbles upon a coven of witches (“Suspiria”), maybe our protagonist has a psychic connection to a fly (“Phenomena”), maybe our killer likes to make his victims watch by taping needles to their eyelids (“Opera”). In this film, our killer uses an electric garrote, throws a noose of wire around their victim’s heads and lops them off. There are a few cool kills that come out of this, and honestly the buildup to those kills are sometimes pretty cool (the only reason I’ve given this film 2/5 instead of 1/5), but at the same time, you really need to suspend your disbelief for the kills to provide a modicum of tension. What’s worse, some of the kills come off as undeniably funny, like (SPOILERS) when Brad Dourif’s character has his head lopped off and it falls, screaming, down an elevator shaft, his eyes still moving around and everything (as a side note, Brad Dourif gives the best performance, and he’s onscreen for maybe a total of seven minutes). It just looks a little silly, and when you compare those sequences to sequences in films earlier in his career, like “Tenebre” or even “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage”, this film feels like Argento has regressed in his filmmaking.
Verdict:
Every Argento film is entertaining (though this film is more laughable than scary), but I certainly wouldn’t start with this film if you were looking to get into Argento. Out of all of the films I’ve see by him, this is honestly probably my least favorite (I still have some absolutely horribly reviewed films I have to see- “Dracula 3D”, “The Phantom of the Opera (1998)”); that being said, it still wasn’t a complete waste of time (that Brad Dourif scene had me dying laughing).
End Note: Tom Savini (special effects artist behind “Day of the Dead” and a whole slew of other gory horror movies) was in charge of the special effects, and most of the stuff we saw was incredibly tame compared to what I’m used to seeing from him. It was simultaneously sort of surprising and disappointing.
Review Written By: