Dario Argento
Giallo

I believe that when the ideas for good films run out, a director should retire from the scene, especially if they've already produced films of the caliber of Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, and so on. We can say that Dario was a good director up until, more or less, the early nineties. I've seen almost all his films up to Opera; from Trauma onwards, I haven't watched them. From what people tell me and from what I've read, it seems like I made the right choice.

Then in 2007, Dario Argento rolled out that massive failure called Mother of Tears, where there was already a certain lack of ideas and a large number of filler scenes, in addition to a forced story that made no sense at all. In short, summing it all up, it was his worst film. Therefore, our Dario needed a film that could redeem him from his latest, terrible works... and here comes Giallo!

The plot is now so cliché that it can't impress anyone, because it's the same as almost all (or maybe all?) of Dario Argento's films: hunting down a serial killer of girls. How original, huh? To me, it seems that the only maniac here is our Dario, given how he treats girls in his films. The idea can be good if used once or twice, but when every film shows the same story, it's inevitable that after about 40 years of films, a viewer, even a loyal fan, starts to get really bored.

The actors are not convincing at all, the only one with a bit of appeal is this mysterious killer... but we've seen too many times in our Dario's films where the villain was a monster / deformed person / sexual maniac who becomes a killer of beautiful girls because he is ugly due to childhood traumas. Enough already.

The banality and predictability reach sky-high levels, and there are plenty of completely useless filler scenes, just to reach the hour-and-a-half film duration. The acting, then, seems inversely proportional to the useless scenes: the actors are so expressionless that, if I had made a piece of cement act instead of a truly disappointing Adrien Brody (yes, him, no peanuts!), no one would have noticed... not to mention the awful dubbing, which hits really low points in the danger scenes and in those where the killer "tortures" (in quotes because almost nothing is shown) his victims. The characters are so ridiculous (like Enzo, the detective with a dark past) and randomly put together that it's a miracle this film even made it to a conclusion. A conclusion that, however, doesn't exist, because the ending is the most frustrating part of the whole film.

There are no twists, no suspense, no thrill of investigation that was present in Deep Red, because we find out almost immediately who the killer is ( and it was not even the end of the first half). This is a terrible flaw of the film, because it takes away the desire to watch the second half: after all, you already know everything. Besides the fact that the discovery happens in such a stupid and random way that you laugh not to cry. And from then on, the whole film develops in a stupid and random way, as was inevitable... and to think that the first 10 minutes showed promise!

And then, at last, the ending: this is a real mockery, it's the definitive and undeniable proof that our dear Dario needs to stop being a director, as he's already made his money. He'd be better off retiring and enjoying life instead of coming out with increasingly ugly and useless films.

And yet, to our dismay, our "beloved" Dario will return to work with Dracula 3D. Oh no, now it's enough.