Horrorfest 2022 Presents: Aenigma (1988, Lucio Fulci)


The really weirdly titled Aenigma was Lucio Fulci once again trying to craft something different than his other movies, although this one was a bit too campy for me at times. It was sort of channeling Carrie, although I was also reminded of Phenomena as well, and those are better movies than this one. Still if you want to see a Fulci movie about a coma patient who gets revenge for the prank pulled on her, this is the movie for you. Lara Lambert is great and sinister looking as Eva, the instrument of Milijana Zirojevic’s Kathy, and Ulli Reinthaler is good as Jenny, who I think you were supposed to root for even though she was involved in the prank. Jared Martin is the doctor who is treating Kathy, yet still fails to make any connection between her and the strange deaths. I can’t tell if that is the plot requiring him to be that oblivious, or if it’s just him being blinded by the two ladies who are in love with him. I’ll go with both here. Both is good.

The snails death is actually pretty nasty even for a Fulci movie, and is probably one of the most memorable from a master of memorable disgusting and gruesome moments. There is also several other decent kills, and the last act is suspenseful enough, particularly since Eva literally becomes an unstoppable killing machine. Does the movie offer tangible answers to what happened, why any of this was possible, and if it could happen again? Hah ha, no, of course not. That’s the Italian horror movie way, and I’m fine with it. Also the end credits shot is very The Shining, in a way, and that’s how I like it.

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