‘The Three Mothers rule the world with sorrow, tears and darkness…’
Dario Argento and his films are the ultimate litmus test for the horror genre. If you can put up with his baffling plotting, indulgent cinematography and stilted acting then you’re a true horror believer. Having said that, even many within the horror community can’t stick him. I loved Suspiria, but I have an inkling that that film might have been the only moment in which he was firing on all cylinders. Like much of his work, Inferno is a hot mess…
Loosely based on the writings of Victorian hellraiser Thomas De Quincey, Inferno is a spiritual sequel to Suspiria and the middle entry in a trilogy rounded off with 2007’s The Mother of Tears. This second instalment introduces the idea of the Three Mothers – a triumvirate of witches and Satan worshippers living in Rome, New York and Freiburg respectively. Once this is established, the rest of the film follows Mark Elliot (Leigh McCloskey) who seems just as bewildered as I was trying to decipher what was going on. As always with Argento’s films, the lighting is truly mesmeric here, and when he stops messing about with the camera, there are some beautiful shots. The acting ranges from competent to laughable, not helped by the ever-present use of dubbing, but there is no denying that many of the death scenes are truly memorable – when Inferno is good, it’s really good.
This is not a consistent film, however. The first and third acts are great but the middle sags considerably, and it is this section that probably makes Inferno so divisive. Despite this, it can never be said that Argento’s films are boring. One long sequence sees a man round up a bunch of cats in a sack and then take them out to Central Park to drown them (!) before himself slipping into the water and then being consumed by rats. To my knowledge, none of this is explained. This is the kind of movie we are dealing with.
Inferno is a curio, and it isn’t as good as some of Argento’s other work, namely Suspiria but also Deep Red, but it is compelling enough and strange enough to merit a watch – especially for horror completists.