I was in conversation with my friend, and co-creator, Jorge one day and he suggested that "director's should retire" as soon as they hit their golden years. I countered with the response that an artist should never retire, because how can they give up doing what they love? But after watching the last few films from George Romero, and this latest entry into Dario Argento's oeuvre, I am starting to agree with Jorge.

There is a killer loose in Italy and he is targeting beautiful women, because as Inspector Enzo Avolfi (played by Adrien Brody in a carefree, I-don't-want-to-be-in-this-movie way) says: "he hates beautiful things". Who doesn't, right? But this guy, who goes by the name Giallo (which means yellow, for those who flunked Italian), isn't just killing his captured cuties, he tortures them and fucks with them mentally...or we are led to believe because we really don't see much of that. The plot explodes across the screen, when Giallo strikes, kidnapping Celine, an "American" model with a forgettable face who is most assuredly not American! Her sister, Linda (played by a dour Emmanuelle Seigner, who has seen better days...and movies) is in town and when her sis is late for a dinner date, she rushes to the cops. There she meets equally dour Inspector Enzo, who is on the trail of Giallo after four other kills, and seeing a correlation between the cases decides to team up with Linda to save the world...or to walk around endlessly in Italy. This is basic by-the-numbers stuff, so I will fore go a detailed plot synopsis in favor of dissecting a few choice elements for your reading pleasure.

Giallo (surprisingly played by Brody himself in heavy-cheek makeup and MacGruber wig with matching Rambo headband) is not a very good bad guy, unfortunately. Most killers either have a weird fetish, like cutting off a lock of hair or talking like Daffy Duck (see New York Ripper), but Giallo likes to suck on a pacifer. Some killers also like to masturbate, too, which is fine. But we get a sequence which is so ridiculously cliche I couldn't believe my eyes. Giallo sucks on his pacifer as he reads Japanese hentai manga where a dog fucks a girl with massive breasts and then puts the manga down to jerk off to screensaver images of some of the girls he's killed. Utterly retarded...but in the hands of a director who gave a shit this probably could have been really creepy, instead of just a simple, flat wide shot. And there in lies the rub for this movie...IT IS FLAT!

Argento's early work was punctuated with vibrant colors, fluid camera work, and intense close-ups. There was weight to the images and they lingered in your mind for days after. His work was distinctly his own. A cinema of psychos and psychosis and the unknown, shot in a way that made you feel every pulse beat and drop of blood. The violence was brutal and stunning, the silences were beautiful and tension-filled at the same time, and the settings were gothic and ominous no matter where the action took place. This was all because of Argento, not because of the scripts. Argento has been called a master of horror (in fact doing a few of the best episodes in the short-lived Masters of Horror series), and he is one...or I should say he WAS one. This movie looks as if anyone could have directed it, and that is a hell of a shame. The only thing that smacks of Dario is the fake head being smashed by the hammer (see picture below), the rest of it could have been shot by any number of nameless horror movie hacks with no sense of style or instinct for visceral storytelling.

I don't fault the screenwriters, Sean Keller and Jim Agnew, and not just because Sean is a friend of mine. Like I said, the stories were never the main event, it was always Argento, and here he drops the ball and turns in a pedestrian effort that offers more boredom than chills. You rent an Argento movie to experience one hell of a mood piece, you don't rent it for the plots. Argento was an artist, a painter who used primary colors as if they were magic. Here the "primary" color is a flat warm brown that makes the film look like every other movie...and not an Argento masterwork.

- Jose Prendes