Jean Tular, in his french "guide des films", wrote about "L'Uccello dalle plume di crystal", the first Argento's Giallo, made in 1970, that its main weak point was that his influences were too obvious, and were not really digested by the young cinephilic director : "a little bit of Dassin, a lot of Hitchcock, and a touch of German expressionism", were for Tular those too omnipresent influences of Argento. More than 35 years later, after having reinvented the horror/thriller genre with a fistful of Giallo masterpieces, it seems that Argento returns to the movies that inspired him when he was young, but unfortunately, it only proves that all kind of inspiration is now gone from the old Italian master of horror. And if this movie also adds another influence to the Tular's list, Dario Argento himself, all this references to Hitchcock's, Lang's or even to himself are so poorly done and so obvious, that the all movie quickly become a parody more than a homage to the classic.
The movie starts with a ridiculous scene which has absolutely no connections with the rest of the story : a little boy and his bicycle are running away from two witches in the wood. Why this scene ? Is it a nightmare, a metaphor of the film to come, an advertising for VTT ? We'll never know, I guess. Then, if you survive this painful introduction, the movie really starts : and it doesn't getting any better. A young student is the witness of a murder and is convinced that it's got something to do with Hitchcock's "Stranger on a Train". And believe me, it doesn't. And the thing is it doesn't have anything to do with Argento's cinema neither : it's just a senile copy of the masters, a ridiculous plagia, not even stylistic (the murder scenes are pitiful), not even clever (the movie claims that a cinema spectator has a lot in common with a Peeping Tom : big deal ! That already was the thesis of "Rear Window"), and the saddest thing is that it's also really ugly.
No mistakes, I'm a big fan of Giallo's movies, and of Argento's in particularly, but this one is seriously so bad, that I almost was ashame to watch it. And don't tell me to be more tolerant because it's a movie made for TV : "Jeniffer", the short movie Argento has made for the "Master of horror" series, is also made for TV, and is ten times better than this one. I hope his next long feature will mark the return of the master (as "Jeniffer" may announce it), and will make us absolutely forget the esthetically crisis that Argento seems to cross since his disastrous version of "The Phantom of the Opera" .
The movie starts with a ridiculous scene which has absolutely no connections with the rest of the story : a little boy and his bicycle are running away from two witches in the wood. Why this scene ? Is it a nightmare, a metaphor of the film to come, an advertising for VTT ? We'll never know, I guess. Then, if you survive this painful introduction, the movie really starts : and it doesn't getting any better. A young student is the witness of a murder and is convinced that it's got something to do with Hitchcock's "Stranger on a Train". And believe me, it doesn't. And the thing is it doesn't have anything to do with Argento's cinema neither : it's just a senile copy of the masters, a ridiculous plagia, not even stylistic (the murder scenes are pitiful), not even clever (the movie claims that a cinema spectator has a lot in common with a Peeping Tom : big deal ! That already was the thesis of "Rear Window"), and the saddest thing is that it's also really ugly.
No mistakes, I'm a big fan of Giallo's movies, and of Argento's in particularly, but this one is seriously so bad, that I almost was ashame to watch it. And don't tell me to be more tolerant because it's a movie made for TV : "Jeniffer", the short movie Argento has made for the "Master of horror" series, is also made for TV, and is ten times better than this one. I hope his next long feature will mark the return of the master (as "Jeniffer" may announce it), and will make us absolutely forget the esthetically crisis that Argento seems to cross since his disastrous version of "The Phantom of the Opera" .