Dario Argento
Phenomena

Difficult to categorize in Argento's filmography, as it's fundamentally an ambiguous product for reasons we will examine below, "Phenomena" represents one of Dario Argento's greatest media and commercial successes, as well as a film that has become part of the collective imagination more so than other excellent works by the maestro, such as "Tenebre" or "Four Flies on Grey Velvet", just to name a couple.

Released in theaters in the early months of 1985, "Phenomena" can be defined as a hybrid, not always controlled and, in my opinion, not too successful, between the classic giallo of the 70s and the horror of the "Three Mothers" trilogy: from the first vein, it inherits a generally linear plot, with a killer spreading panic in a Swiss setting reminiscent of Dürrenmatt; from the second, some supernatural elements (scarcely credible) and continuous references to extrasensory reality, as well as a claustrophobic collegiate setting that makes it a sort of follow-up to "Suspiria."

The story revolves around the usual American student hosted in an educational institute in the heart of Switzerland, during the same period in which a mysterious serial killer is taking young victims from the area. The girl, endowed with "paranormal" powers (sleepwalking, empathy with animals and insects) finds herself reluctantly involved in the events when her dear friend is also murdered. The young woman thus collaborates with the investigative activities, befriending an entomologist and his chimpanzee, who are also involved in the investigation supporting the police, until discovering the identity of the killer and the incredible reasons that drive them to a life of crime.

I will obviously stop here, avoiding describing the chaotic finale of the story, rather lingering on some critical notes on the film.

I will say outright that the irrational Argento à la "Suspiria," "Inferno," "Phenomena" never really appealed to me, considering that the departure from a solid and rational plot leads the director to overly indulge in the form of his works, abandoning the direction of the actors, the control over the development of the plot and the timing of the same cinematic narration.

Hence, an unresolved quality that already characterizes "Suspiria" (hasty ending), which compromises almost all of "Inferno" (absent plot) and, lastly, the very film in question, perhaps remembered for a use of special effects until then unknown to Italian cinema and for recognizable allusions to the clichés of horror (damsel in distress-adolescence/adult world opposition-beauty/deformity opposition-human/animal opposition and affinity) that have made the fortune of the genre since the times of Mary Shelley, passing through Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue and ending with the classics of Hammer or even Stephen King's "Carrie," "The Shining," or "Firestarter."

It is therefore clear that, behind these clichés and behind the commercial attitude of the film, not least thanks to the beauty of the young Jennifer Connelly in the role of the protagonist, "Phenomena" presents a rather predictable and disappointing plot, with excessive dead spots in the development of the story, a choice of locations more suggestive than functional to the story, resulting ultimately in a rather dull and, if I may say, banal film.

The same crime scenes, for the first time in our director's cinema, are shot with little conviction, partly because they are not the epicenter of the film (the epicenter is the paranormal events of the girl and their scenic arrangement) and partly because the director himself did not intend "Phenomena" to be the usual crime/investigation/unexpected solution film. But if this is true, it would have been desirable for our director to set the entire film in a fantasy/romantic key, rather than inserting the young Jennifer's story in the usual macabre context.

The product is saved only thanks to some imaginative scenes, involving insects and Jennifer's paranormal talents, a tank full of disgusting things representing the pinnacle of gruesomeness and explicit horror (and the end of any metacinematic or allusive language in Argento, burying what was good in "Tenebre"), as well as thanks to the cameo of Donald Pleasence (speaking of Hammer...) and the splendid performance of a Daria Nicolodi who returns suddenly to the glory of "Deep Red," before separating her personal and professional life from her partner.

With "Phenomena," Argento and his producers perhaps lacked the courage to detach themselves from the clichés, unconsciously condemning themselves to repeat them for the subsequent two decades, repeating themselves to exhaustion.

Therefore, I would define this film as a missed opportunity, the first, but definitive, misstep in the director's career, a step into the abyss from which he seems never to have returned.