Michele Soavi’s third feature film was very tempting. Initially, it attracts talented creative people, united together in one project. The main part is given to Kelly Curtis, whose younger sister achieved more success in her career, starting the ascent from the iconic slasher to Halloween. The actress copes with the task, but her image is quite simple, as if reduced to a frightened furry rabbit in a mink - it is no coincidence that this small animal is so frequent in the frame, right? Most of all, the characters in the background stand out, for example, the sinister leader of the sect in the colorful performance of Herbert Lom, or even the episodic Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who managed to play a fleeting but bright scene in the subway. In the film a number of recognizable faces that are pleasant to meet on the screen. By the way, who will find a cameo of Daria Nicolodi is a great man.
The production is also successful in technical terms, because the excellent work of the operator, creating real miracles, is well complemented by musical accompaniment from Maestro Pino Donagio, who in symbiosis create a viscous atmosphere of an invisible, but tangible skin of a terrible mystery, open only to the chosen ones, serving the ancient evil. The Italian director perfectly feels the mood of his picture, immersing the viewer in a special world of the supernatural, rightfully savoring the enchanting images of a terrible fantasy layered on realism.
But, having an unconditional gift for building a dream visual series, Soavi often loses the story itself, often limping in the field of clear logic, and also undisguisedly relies on a secondary plot in the genre, developed by a book and film adaptation of Rosemary's child. But where Roman Polanski masterfully balanced on ambiguity until the shock climax, the Italian colleague immediately frankly goes into mysticism, not afraid to take the plot with him. Two years later, these games of surrealism will produce a masterpiece that tells about immortal themes of death, about love, but initially everything exists in aerial dreams, reminiscent of the colorful madness of Fellini, and here there is a binding to the real world. Therefore, there is a certain discussion that makes you amazed by the strange plot twists or behavior of the characters, because how else if the main character begins to flow from the tap water with incomprehensible blue slurry, but this does not affect the process of her further drinking? She also laughs condescendingly as she watches her friend flee in shock, who has just been strangled by a magic rag! The Doctor jeopardizes his reputation with professional rationalism, beginning to open and twist a sealed coffin to make sure the dead man couldn't make a phone call. Outsiders stand right outside the door of the operating room, watching through the glass at the work of doctors. The police take out a loaded weapon and put a gun to the head just troublemaker in the subway. No one is embarrassed by the blatant case that a dead woman can jump to her feet, attack, and then commit suicide. All this and much more reduces the picture to the plane of the film adaptation of a bad dream, arguing with adequacy, forcing the viewer not to track common sense in the observed action, taking the story as a terrible nightmare, where the full-fledged hostess is only a mystic who ousted the other.
It is from such an agreement or rejection of the director’s presentation of the story that very much depends on the evaluation of the production, which is weak as an intriguing detective telling about a lonely young woman who has fallen into the sight of a sinister sect, but if you accept the work not with your mind, but with your heart, then we will get a dark terrible dream, filmed very skillfully.
7 out of 10