If you’re a fan of Suspiria, Reanimator,
and other movies where filmmakers show no fear of going too
far, you might love Phenomena.
Phenomena takes loads of chances, and
mostly succeeds… if you’re willing to take it on its own terms.
But don’t get the wrong idea. You may
have never seen Suspiria, or not give a shit
whether the movies you watch take chances or not.
Phenomena is good, simply for what it is…a movie
with the grip of an angry bear.
If you’re familiar with director Argento’s
movies, (I mention Suspiria because it’s another
of my favorites) you probably won’t expect much plot or
character development. You’d be right, even though both its stars,
Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence, are excellent actors.
Many of Argento’s movies feature a character
forced to track down a murderer, without much training or
experience. Circumstances force them into this.
Jennifer, the hero of
Phenomena, finds herself in that exact
position. Way in over her head, the way Suzy
(Jessica Harper) was in Suspiria.
But Jennifer turns out to have a guardian
angel—in fact, thousands of them. By some unexplainable
destiny, she was born with a deep bond with insects. She
protects them, every chance she gets, even a bee trapped inside a
car with her. In return, they do their best to watch over
her…and save her from danger.
Jennifer–a kinship with all insects
Jennifer shows up at a snobby, clique-ish new
school. Friends are hard to come by.
But Phenomena is not a movie
about friendship. It’s a story of survival—a young,
vulnerable character trying to navigate a sea full of danger,
heading straight into the path of the most insane shark in the
ocean. Jennifer finds herself looking for a serial killer.
But she’s no Sherlock Holmes.
Her weapons? Courage, ingenuity. And the
guardian angels mentioned previously.
But that’s all. You expect that she’ll
be put to the test…big time.
Phenomena immediately
shows you Jennifer’s danger. You’re in a wild, mountain
area—right away, “ the picturesque Swiss Alps” comes to
mind. A school bus, state of the art in appearance, stops to
pick up students.
One girl is a moment too late. She goes for
help, into a house that looks like a ski chalet. Not the
least spooky.
But little bits of hard rock begin to sneak into the
bland music soundtrack. You get a point-of-view shot from
inside the house…very creepy. The girl goes inside, calls
out to see if anyone’s home. She gets no answer but you see
a quick shot of chains bolted to a wall, then shaken hard, as the
music turns to full blast rock and roll. Someone pulls the
chains free.
Suddenly the chains are around the girl’s neck…
tight. She’s unable to open the door and run. Scissor
points stab through her hand. Finally she gets the door open
and runs onto a walkway over a fast mountain stream. She
follows the path between mountains into a clear plexiglass
passageway. Even surrounded by mountains, a feeling of wild
Nature, of endless freedom …
Then suddenly she is stabbed again with the
scissors. You watch a long shot of a severed head plunging
into a cold mountain stream, and realize crystal-clear, that
things are not what they look to be.
This is the Universe where Jennifer, the lonely hero, now finds
herself.
Critics have described Argento’s movies as flimsy
plots used to link a series of shocking scenes, some as violent as
the one just described. Others just teasers.
On the surface, Phenomena has a more
realistic setting than Suspiria, which played out
like an ultra-nasty fairy tale, a nightmare version of Disney’s
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. What is
similar? A teenage girl, trying desperately to deal with
chaos around her.
Like Suzy, Jennifer tries to get her bearings in a
new environment, but is forced instead to react, barely
getting a chance to function pro-actively. People at her
new school are mean, snobbish to her from the first; the only
exception her new friend Sofie. And oh, by the way,
someone’s been killing people on the campus. Welcome to our
school.
And Jennifer carries yet another cross; she’s a
sleepwalker who finds herself outside her building, just when the
murderer could be stalking their next victim.
But one time, this curse turns out to be a
blessing. Alone in the woods, Jennifer is actually led to
safety by a pair of ladybugs. More unlikely, she then meets
a gentle young chimpanzee.
Inga with Professor MacGregor
The chimp, named Inga, leads Jennifer to the
man she takes care of, Professor McGregor, a biologist confined to
a wheelchair. He has taught Inga to follow an electronic
pointer, and to assist him around his house. His field of
study is insects. A reserved, gentle individual, McGregor
bonds with Jennifer. Inga too, soon responds to Jennifer’s
kind nature.
Jennifer and McGregor have a lot in common:
great chemistry with Inga and deep interest in insects.
McGregor is concerned about Jennifer’s sleepwalking and shows her
a way she can wake herself to avoid danger.
Jennifer and MacGregor–unexpected common ground
She has to be grateful for this
friendship. The school faculty is so misguided, it places
Jennifer in danger. They send her to a doctor to investigate
the sleepwalking. His expert opinion? “The first step
toward schizophrenia.”
Thanks a lot, doc. The harassment by the
other students (and the teachers) only grows worse.
Then Sofie, Jennifer’s only friend at school, is
murdered. Jennifer, sleepwalking close by, escapes narrowly.
But Jennifer is able to find an important clue—a
glove small enough to fit a child. Inside the glove are
maggots, and (if I understand her expression correctly), the
maggots can communicate to her–that the glove was the
killer’s. She explains this to McGregor who, rather than
doubting her sanity, trusts her intuition.
McGregor can sense the circle closing fast on the two
of them. He believes that the killer does
not dispose of the victims’ bodies, but likes to keep
them around. He proposes a bold plan, using the “two
greatest detectives” he knows. One is Jennifer. The
other…an insect known as the Great Sarcophagus Fly. This
insect is the mature form of the maggot found in the child’s
glove, and has a strong attraction to dead flesh. And, like
all insects, the fly develops an instant bond to Jennifer, as you
see when it immediately lands on her, then stays still.
McGregor tells Jennifer he’s sure more bodies are
close by; it won’t take long to sense their presence. She
will know right away by the fly’s behavior. Like Suzy in
Suspiria, Jennifer is frightened but finds
courage to bring a close friend’s killer to justice.
You watch Jennifer and her companion, the fly, riding
a bus on a mountain road, through an area like the one in the
opening scenes. Argento seldom gets credit for bringing
performances out of his actors (I tend to agree) but these scenes
are exceptions. Without any unintended laughs, he is able to
show the bond between Jennifer and the fly; actually make you
believe it, as hard as that sounds. When the fly suddenly
goes into a frenzy of activity, Jennifer knows that this is where
they begin their search.
They find the same house where you watched the first
attack. The fly is able to find a severed hand, but Jennifer
is interrupted, then forced to leave.
She doesn’t know yet what you, the viewer already
have seen. Her last friend, McGregor, is dead.
You watch the killer, face never shown, as they enter
the house and slam the door shut, as Inga plays outside.
Inga screams, watching through the window as McGregor is stabbed
in the chest. A moment too late, she finds a door open,
races inside, touches his wound, knows immediately he is
dead. For a long moment, she shows her devastation…then true
fury.
You remember the killer’s black leather gloves as you
see them again on a steering wheel, the car accelerating.
Inga suddenly leaps onto the windshield and struggles to get
inside, her expression one of pure vengeance. But she has no
chance; swept off the car as it speeds away.
Jennifer returns to find the police taking McGregor’s
body away. She knows her only hope now is to run. As
the old cliché goes, the hunter has become the hunted.
From here on, Argento is able to do what he does
best—pure action. Desperation leads Jennifer to accept help
from a woman she finds out (too late) is probably the
killer. Trapped in the woman’s mansion, she finds more than
enough fly maggots to confirm her fears. The detective
Jennifer met the day before comes to the house. Jennifer,
locked in a bathroom, overhears part of the story. The woman
may have been raped years before at a mental hospital and given
birth to a child, then raised it herself.
From here on come a rapid-fire series of nightmare
scenarios: the detective trying to help Jennifer but instead
chained to a wall, only escaping the cuffs by hacking off his own
thumb. A telephone she tries to use to call the police, only
to watch helplessly as it falls into a hole in the stone
floor. A plunge into a pool full of dead bodies.
Escaping the pool, to find a child, sobbing alone in his
room.
Jennifer, convinced this boy has been abused by the
woman for years. The child turning toward her, his face a
monster’s. The monster-child pursuing Jennifer, following
her onto a motorboat…
I won’t give away any more. One review on the
imdb website actually called the ending the all- time best in any
movie, period. I wouldn’t go that far, but I definitely see
where he/she is coming from.
For the record, several of Argento’s movies have
disappointed me; I am not someone who loves everything he
does. There may be a lot in Phenomena that
makes you say, “Yeah…I’ve seen this before.”
Never mind all that. This is the real deal…an
angry bear coming after you, not knowing the meaning of the word
‘stop.’ Don’t miss this one.