Phenomena | Film Review | Slant Magazine

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

Phenomena ***

by Ed Gonzalez on December 4, 2001 Jump to Comments (1) or Add Your Own

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Phenomena (a.k.a. Creepers) displays what is both Dario Argento's battiest and most spiritual landscape. (Argento calls Phenomena his favorite film.) The whole of Phenomena is less than the sum of its parts, but the parts are often terrifying and exhilarating. The film's "Swiss Transylvania" is virtually indistinguishable from any other Argento wonderland. Devoid of cultural markers, the town is the sleepy backdrop for a series of run-ins between insect-loving Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) and a cast of Argento usual suspects. The film's opening set piece is legendary: a young schoolgirl misses her countryside bus, seeks refuge inside a mysterious home and butts heads with the film's faceless, chained-up killer. She flees through a stairwell that leads through a waterfall and is ultimately stabbed and decapitated by the killer. For added effect, her head is ceremoniously thrown into the river below. It's a vicious moment in an unusually tranquil film that contemplates the existential connection between humans and insects and the rifts between nature and the material world.

As Jennifer is driven to the Richard Wagner School, Mrs. Bruckner (Daria Nicolodi) hysterically overreacts to a bumblebee the young girl manages to capture with her hands. Everything and anything here is a potential clue to understanding Argento's characters. A chimpanzee approaches the home of its master, John McGregor (Donald Pleasence). Is the animal the film's killer? Is there an obvious logic to Mrs. Bruckner's fear of bees and Jennifer's love for insects? Jennifer is a somnambulist. The scenes where Argento shows her walking in her sleep are curiously inter-cut with shots of an imagined white corridor (for retro effect, the shot is scored to cheesy '80s synthesizer breakbeats). Before Jennifer's condition is diagnosed you may confuse Phenomena for a gothic rendition of Flashdance. While sleepwalking, Jennifer witnesses a murder and thus becomes a target of the film's faceless psycho. While lost in the woods, she meets John and his monkey and connects with insects near and far. She's like a wayward Gretal led into Argento's fairy-tale forest by a glowing bug. Jennifer's love for all insects makes her a particularly spiritual and complex Argento heroine.

Phenomena's paranormal obsessions are unlike anything you've ever seen—a retro-mystical tableaux of pulsating synthesizers and flying insects ready to do the bidding of their human master. When Jennifer is taunted by her fellow classmates, Biblical hordes of black bugs gather outside her school's window. The girls cringe in fear as Jennifer whispers, "I love you all." This is the extent of Jennifer's love for all of God's creatures. Argento frequently cuts to an insect's point of view, splitting his frame into six or eight segments. However obvious these flourishes may seem, Argento once again showcases his obsession with the eye and elements of sight and sightlessness. In the end, Phenomena's greatest weakness may be that it doesn't demand active spectatorship as much as it seemingly muddles our expectations.

If there's no logical connection between the film's killings and Jennifer's relationship to the world, Phenomena is still uniquely and fabulously scatterbrained. Argento's insect fantasia is otherworldly. (Is it a coincidence that Connelly followed her role here with the lead in Jim Henson's classic Labyrinth?) Phenomena's finale is outrageous, a combination of grotesque Freudian pathologies unleashed, evocations of chimp love, a gruesome finger loss and a wicked decapitation. More important, though, Phenomena feels like a reply to Deep Red's curious insect subtext. (Deep Red's Professor Giordani said, "...butterflies, termites...all of these animals and many, many others use telepathy to transmit orders and relay information.") Jennifer's mystical gifts are undervalued by Argento. In the end, it's less an existential accoutrement than a handy talent.

Director(s): Dario Argento
Screenplay: Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Patrick Bauchau, Donald Pleasence, Fiore Argento, Federica Mastroianni, Fiorenza Tessari, Mario Donatone, Francesca Ottaviani, Michele Soavi
Runtime: 110 min.
Rating: R
Year: 1985

Comments

No-Personality on December 8, 2010, 01:57 AM: This was also for a long time my favorite Argento film. I think some people now say Deep Red is his favorite film while Phenomena is his "most personal." And so naturally, there's a difference. I still love several pieces of it but have to admit there are some hugely problematic chunks. I'll agree with Alan Jones on one thing- it is too childish sometimes (but John Carpenter also says he doesn't think the teen girls' dialogue in Halloween holds up well either and I'd have to at least half-agree). With less big camera moves and colors to distract from the triviality of it. What bothers me now are just the moments that seek to loudly echo the obvious (the more obscenities the Inspector shouts while chained to the wall, the less I think they have anything to do with Frau BrÃ¼ckner). I like your view on the movie more than just a fan condemning it to underachiever status. Though, I do wish the finale had been a little wilder. It took me longer to warm up to Tenebre but that finale packed a wallop and really let loose after all the winding up the film did. Phenomena seemed to work the other way. Its' most impressive sequences were all at the front end. Talk about exhilirating- turn up your sound system about as high as it will go for the first 7 minutes and you will hear your heart start to pound. Still one of the most galvanizing experiences I've had in all my years watching movies (after that, though, the bass levels were unbearably heavy- especially during dialogue).