Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Phenomena

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I was glad to see this one again. It's not one of Argento's best, but I would venture to say that it's his most bizarre. Which is saying something. This time I was able to accept that the movie is a little too slow, not as well shot as most of his movies, not as well constructed, etc etc and really just focus on its stunning weirdness, Like the voice over narration that shows up about 15 minutes into the movie, just long enough to say one line, and then never shows up again. Or the part where a young Jennifer Connolly, who can communicate with insects,  teams up with a fly named the Great Sarcophagus and tries to find a dead body. Or the subplot where a helper monkey's master is killed, and the monkey finds a knife and tracks the killer down for revenge. If nothing else, there really isn't another movie like Phenomena.

2 comments:

Patrick said...

I decided to check and see if you had reviewed this, and you did! One thing I wanted to additionally mention is that I enjoyed how it used our knowledge of gender tropes against us. All of the victims are women which is usually a sign of a male killer. Everyone talks about the killer using "he" and "him" and Donald Pleasance's description of the killer as keeping close contact with the dead bodies implies a sexuality that isn't there.
Also the unforeshadowed freak child. That was cool too.

Dan said...

That's actually an old trick of Argento's, I'd day in at least half of his films, the killer turns out to be a woman. A number of these movies have some pretty crafty/clever means of misdirection.

Also in one of his movies he heavily implies that the killer is a midget. That's strange enough, but then it turns out that the killer is a regular dude who uses a puppet to make everyone THINK he's a midget.