User Reviews

"Phenomena" is Dario Argento's eighth horror success in a row, this time set in a Swiss (pardon me: Swiss Transylvanian) boarding school where the girls are frightened to death. A maniacal killer is loose in the area since quite a while and the local police forces have no idea how to stop him. The cute Jennifer is an American new arrival who fancies insects, sleepwalks and has a famous actor as a father. With the help of a nearby living entomologist, she discovers that she has telekinetic powers that make it possible for her to communicate with insects. This ability might help her a great deal in tracking down the whereabouts of the feared killer… Out of Argento's entire repertoire, this "Phenomena" is the most difficult one to rate. Some of the style elements and gimmicks used belong to the director's finest achievements to date while other aspects are embarrassingly incompetent and crappy. Although I admire the fact that Dario attempted to enrich the standard giallo-like plot with supernatural ideas, the hunt for the murderer is too often ignored which results in a more or less disappointing climax. You can't guess along in identifying the killer, as you're given no clues or additional info at all. Also, the plot holes and illogicalness of the script sometimes make it impossible to take this film serious. And by illogicalness, I don't necessarily mean the whole "communicating with insects"-premise but merely the fact that this 14-year-old girl and a swarm of bugs simply succeed in what the police officers failed to for over more than eight months. And personally, I didn't think it was well-considered to send out a fragile young girl on her own to look for rotting corpses, but our entomologist in wheelchair seemly doesn't have moral issues with that. Similar to this little example, the script features several other ridicule elements that often make you wonder how on earth Argento gained the reputation of talented scriptwriter.

And yet despite all this ineptness, "Phenomena" still is a truly powerful horror film that easily crushes most American competitors of the 80's decade simply thanks to Argento's genuine sense of atmosphere and petrifying storytelling. Dario Argento is a phenomenon himself and every film of his is worthy viewing…it's as simple as that! The tone of Phenomena is very eerie and compelling and you're presented to a never-ending series of beautiful mountain scenery and stylish cinematography. As mentioned above, the setting of this tale is Switzerland and Argento emphases this by a great use of typically Swiss things, like cuckoo clocks and isolated mountain roads. The soundtrack is downright brilliant with an excellent use of hard rock songs by Iron Maiden and Möterhead, while Argento's regular band Goblin delivered its greatest title song ever! The dazzling instrumental composition sticks to you long after you finished watching the film! The acting performances are far above the Italian standards with Jennifer Connelly in a terrific role. Connelly is quite a big star right now, with major productions like "Requiem for a Dream", "Hulk" and "A Beautiful Mind" on her repertoire, but it was in fact the Italian shlock industry that initially discovered her talent! Whoever claimed this type of cinema is entirely worthless. Donald Pleasance slightly disappoints as the tame entomologist and all the young actresses in their debuts easily outshine him. And, of course, we wouldn't be talking about an Argento movie if it didn't contain lots and lots of gore. Phenomena is particularly outrageous, with truly nasty slaughtering and detailed images of gruesomeness. Especially if you purchase the uncut 110 minutes version, a word of warning is in order, I think. Definitely not for the squeamish but warmly recommended to Italian horror buffs!

Falling somewhere in the middle of Argento's downward slope from the heights of Profondo Rosso and Suspiria to the lows of Giallo and Dracula, Phenomena walks the edge between decent and mediocre, with the genuinely dreadful soundtrack pushing it towards the latter. Seriously, what was THAT? It's so inappropriate, it seems like a parody: it reminds me of the Shaun of the Dead sketch with the annoyed zombie switching off the heavy metal music on the car stereo.

At this point of his career Argento had already lost his spark of cinematic genius, but was still dishing out semi-watchable stuff - although I can't recommend Phenomena to anyone but Argento completists.

This lackluster supernatural thriller set in an all-female boarding room in the Swiss countryside (kind of a lousy remake of Suspiria) is notable for starring a 14 years old Jennifer Connelly. Born in 1970, when Argento made his debut with The Birds of the Crystal Plumage, given by the Italian director her first leading role here, Connelly would rise to an Academy Award in 2001, the same year Argento made his first truly terrible movie, Non Ho Sonno.

Connelly had part of a finger bitten off by her chimpanzee co-star while filming. Chimpanzee co-star? Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

Donald Pleasence plays an entomologist / mentor figure; he made several appearances in Italian cinema in those years. To its credit, Phenomena *is* better than the most infamous of those, The Puma Man.

5/10

Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a famous actor, arrives in an expensive board school and shares her room with French schoolmate Sophie.

Jennifer is a sleepwalker, is capable of telepathically communicate with insects and has adaptation problem in the new school.

While sleepwalking, she meets and becomes friends with entomologist, Prof. John McGregor, and his chimpanzee Tonga.

Jennifer decides to help the investigation of Dr. McGregor about a serial killer who is killing young girls in that area. When her friend Sophie disappears and Dr. McGregor is killed, Jennifer decides to call her lawyer and return to Los Angeles.

She is invited to stay in the house of Frau Brückner whilst waiting for her flight, but the serial killer is already chasing her....

Although it's not as memorable as other Argento movies (especially the Giallo ones) this has to be the most bonkers movie the helmer has ever made.

If it's not Connelly summoning insects, or going crazy if someone wants to hurt a bee, it's Pleasence with his ridiculous accent, chimp, and his tremendous idea to make Jennifer the best unknown detective ever, with a fly.

But this is everyday stuff compared to he final act, which just throws plausibility out of the window and covers it with crazy glue. It's ridiculous on the verge of genius, and we have the best 'character turning around' moment since 'Don't look now', and one of the most inevitable deaths/most surprising decapitation sequences ever.

Argentos beautiful camera-work is here as always, and Connelly proves she is a wonderful actress.

Not for all tastes, but so bonkers and out there, it's more or less a perfect horror movie.

Phenomena, a supernatural giallo, was the last film I needed to see in Dario Argento's smash horror run from 1975's Deep Red to 1987's Opera (my two favorite giallos, incidentally). After the solid opening sequence, the movie moves at a steady but slow pace, intermittently drifting between dreamy (or nightmarish, as it were) and dry segments. A young Jennifer Connelly, fresh off of Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, delivers a very fine performance though, keeping the dryer parts bearable. Donald Pleasence lends his gentlemanly presence to the proceedings as well but unfortunately, his screen time is limited. The plot continues to lay itself out in a slightly confounding way until the third act, which is when Phenomena's gears are dropkicked into place, hard. An intense, head-spinning reel of insanity is what follows; mucus spewing, a foul pool littered with maggot-covered body parts, bloody thumb dislocation, a horrifying child mutant with Patau Syndrome, glorious and grotesque fly swarms, lake fires, decapitation by sheet metal, and a vicious chimp with a damn razor!! The aforementioned pace and artistic set pieces that led up to these sick atrocities only served to double the impact. Powerful, pants-wetting horror. Topping it all off is the soundtrack. Argento experiments with a couple hard rock tunes, which kinda bugged me here...I don't think they worked nearly as well as they did in Opera. Fortunately, however, the fantastic title theme by Claudio Simonetti, as well as the other score pieces, make up for that and more. Simonetti's, and Goblin's, music is always a highlight of an Argento feature.

This film is an Italian horror slasher film, usually called Giallo films. They usually have someone killing; however, they almost have a twist that makes them standout compared to American slasher movies. Here, Argento really makes this one standout from the crowd! Bringing us a bizarre film with strange settings, strange powers and strange twists. I will admit, I did see almost everything coming, but that has more to do with the fact I played the video game Clock Tower a couple of years ago and I have heard that the game takes a lot of its inspiration from this film and by golly it does!

The story sees a woman left behind by a bus, she seeks aid at a local residence where something pulls itself free from chains on a wall and begins to chase after the girl, beheading her at the end of the chase. Flash months later as an entomologist played by Donald Pleasence discusses his findings with an inspector and another guy who was unfamiliar with Donald's work. Donald's character is confined to a wheelchair and he has the aid of a monkey. Then a young girl is introduced who is going to a private school for girls and it isn't long before her strange power is demonstrated as she can communicate with bugs. She and the entomologist team up to try and find the person responsible for the killings, but strange things keep occurring!

The film is rather good, as Jennifer is very good in the lead role and Donald does a great job playing a very likable doctor of insects. There are a couple of twists along the way as I knew that one of the ladies at the school was most likely the killer's mother, once again from playing the game, but I picked the wrong one. One problem I had with the film is the killer's reveal as it was a deformed child, which is fine, but when he was coming after Jennifer he was not exactly slight of foot and dominating, but very awkward and clumsy, making me wonder how he was able to kill a healthy girl. I could understand him skewering Donald, as he was taken by surprise, but he was also killed by the mother! Say what you will though, I've never seen another horror film where the heroine is saved by a very revenge driven chimp before!

So, we get chimps, attacking bugs and a pit of maggots so a lot of fun to be had! The scene that got me the most though was when Jennifer started trying to make herself puke, almost made me vomit! The film is not perfect as they made the child killer a bit too immobile and the run time was a bit long and the version I watched went into Italian from time to time, but overall a very good Argento film as he always has such cool music in his movies! He also has a very well shot movie as his stuff always looks like it came straight out of an A list Hollywood studio.