In The Month Of Madness 2019: A Century of Terror

4/100

Luca Guadagnino the fraud.

Here we have this bewilderingly celebrated director taking one of the most beautiful and unsettling horror movies of all time and making it into an arid, dreary political and historical allegory. Sure, why not!

Taking source material, whether it happens to be a film or otherwise, and choosing to put an individual spin on it is a decision that I always applaud. But I just wonder what he saw in Dario Argento's original that inspired him to tell his version of events this way, and at such arse-numbing length.

The distracting casting of Tilda Swinton as the elderly doctor who pretty much becomes front and centre to this prattle means that any serious message that Guadagnino was trying to convey is weighted down by a very, very silly decision indeed. So what exactly is he trying to do or say here? Furthermore, would I care to stick around and find out the answer? Not really, no.

Whatever it is, he tries to connect it vainly to the horror story that I came here to see in the first place like somebody trying to knock a small nail into a wall with a 24 pound lump hammer. The superb double-barrelled scene where a beguiling Dakota Johnson (each time I see her I become more puzzled why she did those Fifty Shades films) dances somebody into a pretzel, for instance, just ends up being lost in amongst the whole mass of things that Guadagnino does or does not want to say.

A decent horror flick with some inventive deaths and violence, and one or two excellent performances, is therefore also lost as it drags on and on to an ending that isn't so much a blast, more a silent fart. Even after suffering through A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name, I was annoyed I missed this at the cinema. Now I'm annoyed I ran up some money on my electricity bill streaming it on my TV. Just go away, Guadagnino, you tedious man.