Film Review - Phenomena

Film Review:

Phenomena

ONCE upon a time young Jennifer Connelly was even younger Jennifer Connelly, Before the goofy muppetry of Labyrinth, before the rocky camp sing-a-longs and the eldritch horror of David Bowie's codpiece, there came Phenomena, a fantastical slaser helmed by the Don of Giallo himself, Dario Argento.

And, Dear Readers, it fucking rocks.

Confusing and Distracting Metatextuality

WHEN embarking on a Stephen King novel, or, indeed, one of the uncountable hoards of adaptations that he leaves strewn in his wake, there is a very easy way to tell if Stephen King had writer's block when he set out to write the story. Is it set in Maine? Is the main character a middle aged writer? It creates a weird metatextual blurring that feels entirely unintentional and incidental, yet also distracting. A similar thing can be said for when actors or actresses play parts named after them.

Anyway, in Phenomena Jennifer Connelly plays Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a famous actor who is sent to Switzerland to study at an all-girls boarding school. Not all is well in pretty rural Switzerland, however. Murder's afoot. An unknown assailant is killing young women, the police are lost and only Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence rocking a pretty dece' Scottish accent) seems to helping them make headway with their case. 

Soon Jennifer crosses paths with him after incident that involves her sleeping walking, witnessing a bit of a stabbing, falling off a roof, escaping from probably-rapists and meeting a domestic monkey, and they discover that she has an affinity for telepathic communication with insects. Using this power, she may the best hope to discover who the killer is and where the bodies are hidden.

Basically Functional

On a basic level the plot of the movie is very tried and true, even by 1985, on a couple of levels. It's partly a hero's journey - a young hero is possesses a power that will help them defeat a great evil, but first must be guided by a wise old teacher to use those powers. On the other hand it's a potboiler slasher film - gritty murders are happening and using clues the main character has to figure out who, where and why. It's an interesting structural contortion, but done with enough finesse that the film never lacks cohesion.

There's a certain detail orientation to the script concerning it's central motif - insects - that helps make a lot of the exposition feel more atmospheric and less generic. Prof Mc's ominous trailer bait speeches are given a sprinkle of authenticity by the fact they fit so seamlessly and naturally into the context that the characters find themselves in. The dialogue is largely function otherwise, although it is questionable how well forty-five year old Argento knows how young teenage girls speak and act around each other.

Mostly, however, the plot is a solidly functional affair. Dario's writing seems to flourish in during the set pieces - he masterfully evokes a moment, whilst he builds the foundations around it with a workmanlike determination. The scenes establishing the cast of characters and the setting are all fine. There's adequate foreshadowing, if something is going to be important later it will be established earlier. When there's plotting to be done the film never lingers, prioritising economy.

The nuts and bolts of the story all do their job to keep the viewer engaged. It is not, however, where the movie shines.

The Silly as The Serious

WHEN a set-piece in a movie is described as nightmarish, normally it is meant in a more metaphorical sense, but in Phenomena both the denotation and connotations work. There's an abstraction in the events, a distortion of time and place that makes a lot of it feel unreal. On the one hand this does make some of the more tense moments "safer" than they otherwise would be, but a line is towed well enough that it never outright deflates tension.

If the movies keeps an keel pace-wise mostly, whenever the tension is ratcheted up the movie is suddenly not afraid to speed up or slow down as it pleases. Juxtaposed against the everyday reality of the story, this heightens the uncanny in the set-pieces and big horror moments. Not uncommon, of course, in a horror, but yet another sprinkling of unreality.

The music, too, swells from brooding understated synth into overpowering eighties slasher synth. There's even a soundtrack cameo from Motorhead and a couple of spins of - of all things - Flash of the Blade by Iron Maiden. Flash of the Blade!

I could have sworn I was the only person that loves that song.

Adding to the dreamlike feel of the set-pieces is the degree of silliness so many of them are imbued with. As someone who didn't spend my formative years in the eighties I can't say for sure how silly they seemed at the time, but Scream did something specific to the minds of a certain generation that were becoming desensitised to such things. What Phenomena does so successfully, however, is to somehow have its cake and it eat. It commits hundred percent to the ridiculousness on screen - trusting if the audience has gone this far they're staying on the train - whilst dipping at many points into outright absurdity. There's a real glee to be found in some of the rather baffling creative decisions, yet also work to not destroy the tension precisely because of the already established dreamlike tone.

Your Friend Pestilence

It, perhaps, shouldn't be a surprise to find that many of the cliches of modern day teen-scream flicks are occasionally subverted or outright mocked in classic horror movies. Hell, Jackson was doing this in The Haunting of Hill House in 1960. Phenomena, sure enough, is a savvy movie, and Argento is literate enough in horror and crime cinema to throw a few curve-balls and misdirections.

The main inversion, however, present in the movie is perhaps the only part of the movie that feels like it could have been better developed. As one of the base fears of the human psyche, endless horror movies have been dedicated to how scary insects are. In Phenomena, however, Dr Mc posits:

"In ancient Greece the butterfly symbolised the soul, the so-called "psyche". From the Greek for butterfly "psykhē". What is this association between insects and the human soul? Is it because of the multifarious mystery of them both?"

As piece of theme setting, it's a hell of a good start. Films like Phenomena that trade so often on shock value may not seem rich territory for having well developed themes and more cerebral ideas underpinning them, but Phenomena set the table with some nicely before deciding it was too full. Rather a shame too.

It's All Double Dutch Italian to Me

There are certain production things that are rather off - Connelly and Pleasance aside, I'd hazard a guess that the cast most of the cast were Italian and either couldn't speak English or had a tenuous grasp on the language. As a result much of the ADR-ing is distractingly bad, especially with the younger actresses, and considering how bad their dialogue, specifically, was to begin with...

***

In conclusion this movie has an Iron Maiden deep cut so you should watch it.