Inferno (1980) Review

"Have you ever heard of the Three Sisters?"
-Sara



After receiving strange messages from his sister, Mark Elliot (Leigh McCloskey) travels to her apartment in New York City only to discover she is missing.  As other tenets of the building start to disappear, Mark investigates and learns something supernatural and evil resides inside.


What Works:

Inferno is actually a sequel to the film Suspiria  Like Suspiria, this movie makes great use of color.  The visuals are very striking and are easily the best part of film.  I love that Dario Argento isn't subtle in his use of color.  It's refreshing.

Inferno also has a really solid score.  It's nowhere near as amazing as Goblin's score from Suspiria, but it's still really good

Finally, there are some cool and memorable kills.  This is a supernatural horror movie, we don't just get stabbings.  One person gets eaten by rats and another falls out of a building while on fire.  We also get a stabbing with some excellent makeup effects.


What Sucks:

The story structure of this movie is very weird.  It doesn't follow a typical protagonist.  It almost feels like a series of vignettes involving standalone characters.  Maybe this movie would have been better as a series of shorts or a miniseries.  Structuring a feature film this way just doesn't work.

Our main protagonist, Mark, is pretty useless.  He only really has two sequences in the film.  I wasn't even sure he was the main character until the 3rd act.  He passes out fairly early in his first spooky sequence and his second one is the finale of the movie, but none of the actions he takes has any bearing on the plot.  He doesn't succeed or fail in anything.  He just witnesses these events.  This does not make for an interesting protagonist.

To make matters work, Mark isn't well developed.  We don't spend time getting to know him or like him in anyway.  He's looking for his sister.  That's it.  That's his character.  If you're going to sideline the protagonist until the 3rd act, at least make us like him.

Finally, there are too many scenes where a character just wanders around a spooky room looking around.  This is my biggest pet peeve in horror movies and Inferno does this a lot.  It's so boring.  Just get to the point!  We get it!  It's spooky!  Move on!


Verdict:

Inferno is a very disappointing follow-up to Suspiria.  While the color, score, and kills are all solid, the structure is a mess, the main character sucks, and there are too many boring stretches.

 3/10: Really Bad     

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