Phenomena

A pseudo supernatural giallo by the master himself, Dario Argento? Sign me up! For anyone else, a killer is on the loose in the Swiss country side. Jennifer is a young girl going to a private school out in the country. She also happens to have a psychic link with insects. As girls from her school begin being abducted and murdered, Jennifer has to piece together the things she saw while sleep walking and use her link with the insects to find the killer and get revenge.



Private school full of girls? Check. Brutal killer that you never get to see? Check. Awesome soundtrack by The Goblin? Check. Must be an Argento flick. And a good one. It follows the typical giallo tropes, getting you into the whole mystery of "who is the killer?" But the added part with the girls psychic powers really puts it up there.

I know it may sound lame, but it presents itself in some good cool ways. At one point the girls from the school as well as the head mistress had found a letter from Jennifer to her father. They read it mockingly. In the letter she exclaims to her father that she can communicate with the insects. See what they have seen. As they are reading the letter, Jennifer walks in. Shocked and angry, she storms over the the mistress and wrenches the letter from her hand. She storms away yelling, "This is mine!" One of the girls follows after her, says "Jennifer!" and as she stops and turns around, the girl quickly gets in her face and begins buzzing like a bee. The other girls follow suit. Encircling her, all yell about the bugs, making sounds and finally erupting in a chant of "We worship you. We worship you."

As all the girls poke her and mock her, she begins breaking down and crying. Suddenly, a wave of calm rushes over her. We can see a different person in her. She tells the girls "I love you. I love you all". A massive swarm of flies smothers the house. They black out the windows, their buzzing becomes deafening. Finally, Jennifer passes out.

When she comes to, she is lying in a bed, I.V.s and sedatives, the mistress telling the nurse that a ambulance is on the way to take her to the mental hospital. She is diabolic. She is the Lady of the Flies.... of course Jennifer manages to escape and finds herself in the care of Dr. Loomis of Halloween fame, except he is some other doctor that studies insects.

Its a pretty good movie. In typical giallo fashion, its slower. But watching a young girl get a spear shoved through the back of her head and out her mouth makes up for that. And then there is the killer. Jennifer is taken to the home of the school director. She seems a little odd, all the mirrors in her home covered up. Its because her little boy doesn't like to see himself she says. She forces Jennifer to take some pills... poison, Jennifer forces herself to puke them up and runs for the phone. The director takes it from her, locks it in a different room, and finally knocks Jennifer unconscious. She wakes, the room encased in a metal security shield. She climbs through a window into the room with the phone. There is a hole in the floor which, of course, the phone fell down, Jennifer goes in to find it. At the end she finds herself in a dank dungeon like room. In the center there is a pool full of rotten, putrefying bodies. She gets frightened and falls in, gasping for air, struggling to get out. The director shows up and laughs. Jennifer manages to get out, a captive distracting the director, and runs.

Jennifer hides in a room, only to find that she is not alone. The directors son is standing in the corner. Jennifer tries to comfort him, he no longer has to hide, to deal with his crazy mom. He turns and pure terror runs over her face, he is a hideous, deformed little monster child. He is the real killer.

Its a pretty cool little movie. Its sorta slow, but there are plenty of things that make up for it. Also, deformed, killer children tearing their own faces off as flies swarm them.