Review of Phenomena (1985) by Manicure — 22 Nov 2020

"Phenomena" is perhaps the last decent Dario Argento film, and is actually quite good for a horror B-movie. The visuals are more toned-down than Argento's previous works, but his direction is still tasteful and the acting is slightly better than usual.

As always, the clunky dialogues and nonsensical plot are the biggest flaws of the film. It starts off with the same structure of "Suspiria": a young girl (played by a stunning Jennifer Connelly) is enrolled in a school where weird things happen and people get mysteriously killed. It gets better towards the end, but the whole part in the academy and McGregor's endless speeches tempted me to stop there. I am confident they could have cut at least 30 minutes of extra fat.

Once the killers are revealed, the pacing drastically improves, not to mention that all the memorable scenes are condensed there. The music is not terrible, but there are few heavy metal songs randomly thrown in that killed the tension in many scenes. Goblin's main theme is cool, but I am not sure it fits the atmosphere of the film.