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.

The Evil Dead: Raimi's Camera as a Predator

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Most horror films point the camera at the monster. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, made in 1981 for roughly $375,000 scraped together from Michigan dentists and small investors, did something stranger and cheaper: it made the camera the monster. There is a force loose in those Tennessee woods, and for long stretches of the film you never see it because you are riding on its shoulders, crashing through the undergrowth toward five students who have no idea what is coming. That single decision — turn the point of view into a predator — is why a no-budget picture shot by a 21-year-old still feels feral more than forty years on.

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Tenebrae: Argento Turns the Knife on His Critics

The Evil Dead: Raimi's Camera as a Predator