Dario Argento is worshipped by horror fans, and largely unknown to everyone else. His Suspiria, a supernatural slasher, is still considered by many one of the best horror movies ever made. Visually, his movies are almost always stunning, although his scripts and directing of actors often leaves a lot to be desired.

And now he’s made an episode of Masters of Horror, with an annoyingly misspelt title. A policeman rescues a disfigured young girl from a crazed vagrant who’s trying to kill her, only to start an affair with her, ignoring her tendency to kill and eat small animals and children.

It’s… not great. The idea isn’t too bad, and fairly original, a sort of succubus myth with added gore and cannibalism. That specific touch makes me think that Argento’s incapable of considering horror that doesn’t have gore, which is a rather limited mindset.

Also, this has Dario Argento directing sex scenes, a thought that made me imagine a lot of things, none of them pleasant. In actuality, those scenes work fairly well, but the rest of the movie is illogical, shallow, predictable, and honestly a bit boring. You can guess where it’s going within the first 10 minutes, and sure enough, that’s where it goes. The makeup and effects on “Jenifer” are good, and the initial reveal of her face is creepy, similar to the initial reveal of the children in Cronenberg’s The Brood.

I’m not giving up Masters of Horror yet, though, but this episode is probably the weakest so far, and can safely be skipped.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2006 at 8:42 am and is filed under Horror, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.