Director: Dario Argento
Year: 1985
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Creepers
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
After arriving at a Swiss boarding school, a young woman witnesses a brutal killing of one of the schoolgirls there but is unable to provide more information on it, prompting a meeting with a local professor who has been involved in a murder mystery haunting the school and team up to solve the brutal killings.
Review:
This was a pretty solid if somewhat flawed effort in his catalog. One of the more likable features here is that it’s nice to see Argento try something different in his slasher cannon. Instead of the usual realistic themes that had affected most of his other giallo work at the time, this one feels a little more supernatural in its approach. The basic framework and black-gloved killer running rampant at the school knocking off the staff and faculty at the school is something that would easily be found in several of his films and even includes minor touches throughout that call back to several of those efforts. The added influence of her control over insects gives it an entirely different feel altogether than most of his other films don’t have as the two moments utilizing hordes of flies are just marvelous in both their technical presentation and the idea behind them. Seeing these elements at play in the investigation provides a rather intriguing means of building everything together which starts this on a fine note by toying with these intriguing and unusual concepts.
Even still, there are some classic Argento moments detailing the connection between the traditional giallo elements and the supernatural insect control. The opening waterfall attack is fantastic with the usual stalking antics where the POV of the killer stalking the suspect is a great site to achieve and hedge clippers piercing the body for the final blow comes off well, drawing a lot of suspense in it because of that and the graphic outcomes are all the more shocking. The second attack is probably the most brutal of the killings, and with Argento's usual flair, it becomes a strong highlight. Another classic moment is the subterranean sequence towards the end. It starts out with one of the best jumps in the film and quickly grows to epic proportions of dread the way only Argento can deliver. It is a great scene that truly shows off Argento at the top of his game more than any other in the movie. As well, with the wild and at times absurd imagery and concepts at play here, this is decidedly one of the most over-the-top and frenetic genre efforts.
There is one main problem here that really needs to be addressed which holds it down. The film is just way too padded out and wears out its welcome fast with many scenes that go on for no real reason. The film contains so many sequences of students needlessly tormenting her that it loses its impact after a while as the majority of these scenes focus on awkwardly shoehorning the supernatural powers she has into this for a generally clumsy feel despite the creativity present in doing so. What hurts it the most, though, isn’t the frequency of the taunts but it’s the duration of them lasting for longer time than needed to get their full effectiveness had they been trimmed. Also, this lengthens an already stretched-out beginning by giving more time to exposition than the killing, making the low-body count in the first half even more noticeable. The slow beginning is something that should've been fixed by giving a bit more credence to these issues which would’ve made everything feel less clunky as these combined are what manage to bring this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A few snips here and there and this is another one of Argento's classics. It has the ingredients, but a couple of errors prevent it from being in the same league as his masterpieces. As it stands, this is still one of the better efforts in Argento's canon and deserves a look from all fans of his work but those who are turned off by those factors or not a huge fan of his films should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment