Day 19: Tenebre
Premise: A serial killer obsessed with Tenebre, a novel by celebrated author Peter Neal, is systematically murdering young women. The police turn to Neal, recently arrived in the city, for his help in finding the killer. However, soon they might all discover that, for this killer, the lines between fiction and reality are more blurred than they might appear…
Also a lot of people get stabbed. Or axed. Or both
Thoughts:
Another Italian giallo movie, huh? And this time from probably the biggest and most well known director of the genre, Dario Argento. I’ve already seen quite a few of Argento’s movies over the years, Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and, of course, the ever-classic Suspiria. So I wasn’t too surprised when I ended up enjoying this one a fair bit as well.
That said, like Alligator, I’ll admit it’s not really a movie I have all that much to say about. If you’ve seen any of Argento’s other classic slasher movies, like the aforementioned Deep Red and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, then you’ll probably get what this is about. It does have quite a lot of really cool and appreciable aspects to it, like a neat little meta-commentary of the relationship between an artist and his work and the problems of unintentional subtext in regards to violence in said fictional work. Plus there are some great shots and kills to be found, some cool twists and some really clever foreshadowing here and there, including a really subtle switch in weaponry that hints at one of the big twists mid-movie.
Still, once again, there’s really not all that much else I have to say about it. It’s a good film and a good representation of the giallo genre. Better than Zombi 2 (which, okay, technically isn’t a giallo film, even though Lucio Fulci was a big giallo director,) but not quite enough to really get me passionately talking about it, unlike some of his movies. Still, even if I don’t think it’s the best of Argento’s films, there’s more than enough here to be worth a watch.
Was is Scary?: Not amazingly, but it was pretty tense at points.
Was it Silly?: Not really.
Overall Grade: B+
Ineffectual Comic Relief 
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