Phenomena (1985)

directed by Dario Argento

Italy, Switzerland

116 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

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I've mostly been neutral on wanting to watch other Dario Argento films, to be honest, because Suspiria is such a powerhouse that even something made by the same person can't possibly come close to reaching its heights. I've yet to prove myself wrong there, but Phenomena is an extremely close second. Both films share the same beginnings - a young girl arrives, alone, at a prestigious all-girls school where strange deaths have been occurring - but differ entirely in terms of their aesthetic. Where Suspiria is absolutely lurid, Phenomena trades color for a more realistic, blandly fashionable environment. But somehow both have the same vibe, the same dreamlike feeling of drifting through and being presented with images and events sans explanation.

Jennifer Connelly plays a girl, also named Jennifer, who becomes a student of this supposedly well-regarded girls' school in Switzerland. She's the daughter of a rich, famous, and unseen movie star, and this plus her sleepwalking and her affinity for insects gets her ostracized by all the other girls. Nobody likes her except Donald Pleasance and his terrifying trained chimpanzee. Because of the poor dubbing, every single person in this movie feels kind of disconnected from reality; Connelly probably puts in the most decent performance, but because everybody around her is acting so weird, she comes off weird too. You think her ability to commune with insects is going to possibly lead to some larger plot twist, but although it does play into the ending, this is mostly just yet another thing that remains unexplained. It's not really that she intentionally tries to use her power to help solve the string of murders that's been happening, she just kind of... stumbles into things repeatedly until the real killer has no choice but to reveal themself.

Really nothing here makes any sense. The film is set in a school, but it feels more like a vague idea of what school is like as dreamt up by somebody who's either never been to school or got out of school so long ago they forgot about it. There's only one actual classroom scene, where a girl in a Bee Gees shirt answers a question with a Bee Gees joke and is lectured for about five minutes straight in the background while the main characters are talking. This is never referenced again, and is this girl's only appearance. Other than that, we don't ever find out what exactly they teach or do at this school - it's just a lot of girls milling about in the halls, girls gossiping in their dorms at night, girls bullying each other, girls getting killed. For a movie with a killer hiding somewhere in it, everybody is just extraordinarily honest in their actions. I kind of envy how nobody in this seems to be trying to repress or hide anything about themselves, saying whatever comes into their mind, acting however they want without regard for social compunction. This equals a lot of bullying, though. Jennifer quickly gets disillusioned with the cruelty of her schoolmates and repeatedly begs her dad's agent to come pick her up even though in any other context such actions would brand her as a poor-little-rich-girl type.

The soundtrack is solidly about half of why this movie is so great. I respect Argento as a director for his ability on its own, but imagining the scenes in this movie where music plays a key part if they were silent and un-soundtracked made me realize how agonizingly slow some of it would be without music. Goblin provides tension and weight to times where otherwise there would be little to none. I generally try not to let music choices influence my opinion on a film too much, because while it's important, it's not typically the most important thing, but in this case the soundtrack is a huge part of why this is such a formidable movie.

I think the thing about giallo is that the question of why a person would be entertained by seeing a dead body or watching a flamboyant murder is dispensed with entirely. Like, giallo says that murder is entertaining, we do want to see new heights in blood spatter, new lurid colors of flesh, new wild methods of killing somebody, and we don't want to see it because we're depraved and jotting down ideas in a clandestine notepad, we want to see it because death and violence can be made into art. Anything can be made into art.

Like I said, nothing here makes sense and nothing is explained, but there seem to be hints at something weird going on that Argento refuses to outright tell us about. A lot of giallo at the time was experimenting with Lovecraftian motifs but putting its own unique spin on it, which often meant showing us some cultists and a tentacle monster but not caring too much to delve into the nihilism and existential disgust that Lovecraft was so fond of. I would not call Phenomena an outright Lovecraftian film, but Jennifer's familiarity with insects gave me this feeling that there was something much bigger than humankind going on. Wind also plays a big part in the atmosphere of this film - people acknowledge it as something maddening, something that influences human behavior. How can wind make people lose their grip? How can a lone firefly summon the humanlike capacity to lead a girl to an important clue to catch a killer? How can a swarm of bugs be called down from the heavens by sheer force of will to save someone's life? These bizarre divergences of nature from its typical course made me feel like at the heart of Phenomena was something much more powerful than was ever explicitly shown.

The climax is as genuinely nuts as the rest of the film. I would explain it, but I don't want to spoil it and anyway I think I'm actually not capable of explaining it with words. After Suspiria, it struck me how Argento was still able to create such a deeply bizarre and wacky climax here without the use of psychedelic colors - everything is ugly when it gets to the end, just covered in maggots, oozing, writhing, bug-infested, nightmarish and weird. Suspiria and Phenomena feel like two movies inspired by the same dream. I'm glad that these movies exist the way they are. As I've said about a lot of things, this is one that I can talk about, but I can't impress upon you how bonkers it really is to watch it. Movies like this inspire me to be a little more bold in my own art, a little more creative and honest.