POV: You love the opera! And you’re a psycho murderer!
Great to finally catch up with Dario Argento’s horror thriller, Opera (1987). A ingenue opera singer, Betty (Cristina Marsillach), gets her big break when the original lead to a production of Verdi’s Macbeth suffers an accident. As the gothic production, which uses live ravens during the performance, opens to ecstatic audiences, a mysterious gloved killer strikes cast and crew members, clearly obsessed with Betty. Argento’s swooping POV shots and opera-set atmosphere helps get over some of the boring parts to the first act. When the sadistic idea is introduced of tiny spikes taped to the Betty’s eyelids, so that she has to keep them open to watch another grisly murder committed in front of her… that’s such a sicko-genius idea, which meta-textually speaks to Argento’s whole thing: I want you to watch this sick thing I did! Cue Bird Box Tom Hollander meme. Add that the opera director, Marco (Ian Charleson), is also a horror director to this film’s self-reflexive commentary (“I jerk off before each shot,” Marco jokes about his horror films).
Some wonderful suspense sequences and graphic kills, underwritten by the strangeness that is either Argento, the giallo genre or the Italian film industry where cause-and-effect is scrambled; a murder is committed, and the lead character doesn’t go to the police right away but wanders around, or several murders affecting the opera’s production but they still go ahead with the performance anyway. Not to mention the ridiculous ending which I enjoyed by how Argento is almost ‘edging’ the audience with each twist (“Is this a dark sicko ending? Or a silly sentimental ending? Sicko? Schmaltz? Hahaha!”). When they reveal how they’ll capture the killer at the opera, I was applauding – bravo, maestro! Bravo, you frickin’ maniac!
Streamed on Tubi (US). Recommended.
VHS Tracking 