Review of Phenomena (1985) by Riley H — 27 Aug 2010

There are some genuinely creepy moments in this film, especially towards the end, but the film is mostly ridiculous. There's too much going on for one thing: we could have the killer as a separate movie from the girl with power over insects quite easily.

This is my first Argento film and I am very underwhelmed. There are some moments, as I said, but there are also lots of totally unnecessary shots, like every slow motion shot of breaking glass. The effects are pretty weak, even for the mid 80s (though the makeup is good).

And Argento is using that same old annoying Italian filmmaking style where they hire a couple American actors and then dub everything so that the film can be released in English. Twenty years earlier it was sort of forgivable but in the mid 80s it's hard to understand.

There does seem to be a desire on the filmmakers' parts to make this film appeal to multiple types of horror fans and I think maybe that is the real reason why it doesn't really work.