Review of "Venicefrenia," Alex de la Iglesia's horror film about the hunt for tourists in the city on the water
Not very scary, but a spectacular horror film about the misadventures of Spanish tourists in Venice.
On a huge cruise liner, five Spaniards arrive on the shores of Lido Island for the carnival: Isa (Ingrid Garcia Johnson), Susana (Silvia Alonso), Aranza (Goise Blanco), Javi (Nicolas Illoro) and Jose (Alberto Bang). Isa marries the perpetually busy Alfonso (Nico Romero), who plans to move his wife to London. The friends decide to have one last good time - perhaps for the last time together. The courage is muted by the inhabitants of the town on the water, who are deadly tired of the crowds of tourists: a radical terrorist group in medieval costume unnoticed has been exterminating the visitors for several years.
In 2010 Alexa de la Iglesia won the director's prize at the Venice Festival for "A Sad Ballad for Trumpet. Perhaps it was a visit to Mostra that moved the Spanish author to create the horror film that unfolds on San Marco. De la Iglesia is probably the most wild and unpredictable director from the Pyrenees: his films ("Slaughterhouse Fire", "Wild Story" and "The Witches of Sugarramundi") are always filled with black humor on the brink of a foul.
It's hard to pinpoint the genre of "Venicefrenia": it's a jallo, a slasher, a satire on "The Hostel" and other horror stories about hapless tourists who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The friends don't speak Italian, don't know their way around the same narrow streets of Venice, and one gets quickly lost. Every misfortune that a tourist can imagine happens, and in addition, neither the local police nor the Spanish embassy is in a hurry to come to the aid of the troublemakers. If you put yourself in the place of the main characters while watching the adventures of friends is much more interesting than if you gloat over the failed tour. The intrigue quickly disappears.
The director treats the guests of the city on the water with both pity and mockery: it is not for nothing that Spaniards are killed long, beautiful and excruciatingly. De la Iglesia laughs frankly at the other tourists, who act as a motley backdrop to the bloody spectacle. Two Italians, one dressed as the Plague Doctor and the other as the jester Rigoletto, lead the activist terrorists who open a hunt for annoying foreigners. In Venice during the masquerade, the pair look organic; no one can think that the "actors" conceal danger. Even the murder in the street is perceived by the crowd as part of the performance. De la Iglesia accurately captures the understandable desire of the vacationers for a mass experience. The people demand bread and circuses, but the murderers are just the crowd's go-to guy. Rigoletto and the Plague Doctor look for victims in bars and parties - any second of pleasure can turn into a nightmare.
The author's penchant for prickly irony plays a cruel joke. Apart from a few spectacular chases through Venice at night and bloody carnage, the film has nothing to scare you with. "Venicefrenzy" descends into a colorful, noisy and rampant buffoonery, and the very real problem of the excessive influx of tourists quickly recedes into the background. Though the murderers' faces are hidden behind masks, the announcement of their names is not a spectacular end to the investigation of a series of crimes. De la Iglesia himself doesn't know how to end an ambitious party on a high note, having to hastily come up with additional motivations for the villains - adding personal tragedy to the radical desire to cleanse the city of tourists.
"Venicefrenia" can please horror film lovers only with comedy tricks: the director turns on disturbing music at a tense moment, and then mocks the expectations of an audience that has seen the same-type American slashers and sharply defuses the situation, as if he accidentally put the wrong song on. The characters split into groups (as if they've never seen a horror movie in their lives), but a careless mistake isn't always followed by cruel punishment. The familiar plot tropes don't lead to a logical conclusion, but are cut short. De la Iglesia tries to deconstruct the horror genre, but instead offers only absurd parody, a buffoonery. There are few truly scary or funny episodes in "Venetiafrenia." The picture falls between the fronts: it is neither a pure horror nor a comedy horror. And the whole construction of the film looks artificial, because the director himself has a hard time figuring out what he is shooting and why.
Colorful costumes, views of the cathedrals of San Marco and ancient mysteries beckon, but it's only a masquerade, all a sham. If the Spanish director wanted to make a horror film that would scare away uninvited guests from Venice and save the unique city, the task was not accomplished. The desire for spectacle will triumph over fear.
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