Amazon.com video review:
The first half of Dario Argento's heady psycho-thriller is a
mesmerizing merging of dream and reality. A beautiful young Italian
detective (Asia Argento, who does little to convince us she's a tough,
seasoned
cop) investigating a serial rapist is suddenly overwhelmed when the
paintings in an art museum erupt with life. According to the film, this is
"the Stendhal Syndrome," an intense and overwhelming response to art that
turns the viewer mad. As Anna steps in and out of fantasy worlds like
Alice through the looking glass, she's kidnapped by her quarry, who
repeatedly rapes and tortures her in a dark, dank underground cave. The
delirious nightmare of shattered reality becomes a sadistic, mean-spirited
spectacle of murder and degradation--perpetrated on, of all people, the
director's own bound and beaten daughter!--and the thriller disintegrates
into a paranoid mystery of amnesia, split psyches, and shadowy phantoms. At
its best this is a mesmerizing vision of madness: paintings melt into the
real world while objectivity disintegrates before our eyes. But before the
unexpectedly sensitive conclusion, Argento puts the viewer through a
bravura
but brutal series of gory murders (a slow-motion bullet passes through both
cheeks of a helpless victim, and another shooting is viewed from inside the
body) and unsavory violence. The poetic beauty of Phenomenon and the
craftsmanship of Suspiria and Deep Red are sorely missed.
--Sean Axmaker
