Tenebrae: Argento Turns the Knife on His Critics

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Most directors answer their critics in interviews. Dario Argento answered his with a film in which the critics are murdered, one by one, by a killer inspired by the director’s own work — and then made the murderer’s motive a lecture on how the disapproving deserve to die. Tenebrae, released in 1982, is the most self-aware giallo ever made, a razor-sharp thriller about an author whose fiction is being restaged as real killings, written by a man who had spent a decade being accused of glorifying violence against women and had clearly had enough. It is cold, bright, brutal, and slyly funny, and it may be the most purely enjoyable film Argento ever directed.

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Tenebrae: Argento Turns the Knife on His Critics