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I want to know who this man is who has been making films under the name Dario Argento for the past ten years, because the Dario Argento that made this joyless turd is not the same Dario Argento that made classic films like Suspiria and Deep Red. Try as I might, I can’t think of another director who has made films that reach such artistic highs, and movies that plunge to the pathetic, amateur low of movies like Giallo. Ever since his directorial debut, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Argento’s work was bursting with color and creativity. The stories he told were nothing special, but the way he told them was hypnotic, he was an artist who could find terrible beauty in horrifying acts of violence, and his collaborations with musicians like Goblin and Ennio Morricone ensured that his striking images were complimented with sounds that rivaled what you were seeing on the screen.

Then, in 1998, something happened. Argento’s dream was to do his own version of The Phantom of the Opera, which seemed like a story that he was born to tell his own version of, given the content of his body of work. The movie came out, and it was a complete and total travesty. The concepts were interesting, but everything was executed about as well as an attempt on Rasputin’s life, from the lamentable casting of Julian Sands as the Phantom, to the complete absence of Argento’s visual kick. Ever since then Argento’s work has felt soulless, as though he just stopped caring. Sleepless has its moments, but it was trashy garbage at the end of the day, The Card Player was boring, Do You Like Hitchcock? was a nifty homage but was lacking on multiple levels, his episodes of Masters of Horror had sleazy thrills (especially the one where Meat Loaf skins himself) but he’s capable of more than that. Then Argento made The Mother of Tears, the third film in a supposed trilogy he had talked about, the first two films being his classic Suspiria and the underrated Inferno. It seemed as though Argento was acknowledging that his work lately had been sub-par, and here he was making an earnest attempt at a comeback. There was absolutely no way it couldn’t disappoint. The Mother of Tears was perfectly watchable, but it was just forgettable Euro-sleaze infused horror like his other recent movies. But before I could be predictably disappointed by that movie, the internet buzz was humming about Argento gearing up a movie simply titled Giallo, the name of the genre that Argento helped define in the late seventies, and it was going to star Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, and surely an actor who has worked with the likes of Roman Polanski, Wes Anderson, and Terence Malick wouldn’t say yes to a crappy script that Argento squeezed out of his bowels over a weekend…right? Famous actors had been in Argento’s recent films, but most of them were famous within the horror genre, this was Adrien Brody, a guy who was in a lot of good movies by great directors, so even though I was burned by The Mother of Tears, I thought maybe Giallo had a shot at being good, or at least enjoyable. This just shows how incredibly stupid and hopelessly optimistic I can be, even after repeated disappointment.

I’ve made it perfectly clear that Argento’s recent movies are bad. This is not subjective, this is not an opinion. It is a stone cold fact that he has been making terrible movies since 1998, anyone who says otherwise is lying to you out of some sense of fan loyalty. However most of them have been enjoyable on a very base, sleazy level that leaves you needing a shower afterward. This is honestly the nicest thing I can say about his recent films. But Giallo is worse, it doesn’t even have the cheap thrills that could satisfy the most basic and shameful of cravings a horror fan could have. Giallo takes no pleasure in what it is or what it could be. It isn’t scary, it isn’t interesting, it isn’t worth anyone’s time. The story is painfully paint-by-numbers: a cop (Adrien Brody) investigates the kidnapping of a girl by a killer named Yellow, who is played by an asshole named Byron Diedra, which happens to be an anagram for Adrien Brody, a discovery that gave me a brief homicidal twinge somewhere in the stem of my brain. So we have Adrien Brody playing the cop and the killer, Brody’s cop sporting a goatee and the killer looking like the burn victim son of Richard Simmons and Axl Rose. It would almost be like the script Donal Kaufman was writing in Adaptation if it wasn’t somehow infinitely more idiotic. In the plot, things just sort of happen, people sort of get killed, and it sort of ends. Talking about what Giallo means in context is much more interesting than talking about the movie itself, out of context it has literally nothing to offer society. It hurts me to say this as a former die-hard lover of Argento’s work, but I won’t watch anything else he makes. Dario Argento is no more, he’s a pod person resting on his laurels, counting his money in the directing chair instead of focusing on telling a story. If you’re a fellow fan of the horror genre, you know who Argento is, and some of his films are probably very dear to you. Do not, under any circumstances, waste your time or (God forbid) your money on this horrible, horrible film. Just please know that it’s terrible, don’t feel compelled to see it for yourself and evaluate it on your own. You’ll only regret it.

(But not as much as poor Adrien Brody)