Ænigma (1988)

That was an excellent one.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It's commonly agreed by Euro-horror enthusiasts that Fulci's talents began to rapidly diminish following his deeply offensive (but also incredibly awesome) 1982 giallo, The New York Ripper. Having seen his interesting but snail-paced A Cat in the Brain (1990), and his depressingly awful Demonia (1990), I was inclined to agree, but my positive reaction to The Devil's Honey (a terrific sado-erotic drama from 1986) made me more interested in checking out his latter-day efforts. Aenigma is often singled out for ridicule by viewers, and to an extent I can see why. Commonly referred to as a Carrie rip-off, but even more derivative of Patrick (1978), Aenigma chronicles a comatose's girl's psychic revenge on her catty schoolmates and hunky gym teacher after they pull a cruel prank on her. Having been hit by a car after fleeing the humiliating scene, in which the gym teacher pretended to seduce her, she possesses a new classmate named Eva (played by Lara Lamberti) and begins to pick off her tormentors in increasingly bizarre ways. Things are complicated when the promiscuous Eva begins an illicit affair with a dreamboat doctor (an often befuddled Jared Martin), whose subsequent relationship with another student draws the jealous wrath of Eva and her possessor. This revenge story is often nonsensical, and at times downright comical, but Fulci brings some of the same artistry and imagination that made his earlier thrillers so effective. The cinematography by Luigi Ciccarese is sometimes flat, and has that hazy soft focus and heavy blue gel lighting that plagued so many films in the eighties, but becomes more nuanced and colorful in the film's supernatural scenes. A sequence in which a girl is smothered to death by snails is usually singled out for derision, and it does come across as a misguided attempt by Fulci to outdo the spider attack scene from The Beyond (1981), but I admire Fulci's balls in trying to make snails scary. It doesn't work, but he later provides more effective jolts in a nightmarish museum death scene, in which the exhibits come to life and attack one of the villainous schoolgirls. Overall a lesser effort from the prolific Fulci, but far more entertaining than I'd been led to believe, and it still gives the impression that an artist is behind the camera, struggling against all odds to inject some originality and style into a derivative and underfunded commercial venture.

A prank at a girls' private school in Boston goes horribly wrong, and the socially awkward Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) is struck by a car and ends up in a coma. Shortly after, her revenge minded spirit comes to rest inside a newcomer to the school named Eva (Lara Lamberti). Kathy / Eva fall in love with nice guy doctor Robert Anderson (Jared Martin) while administering a particularly amusing and nasty brand of vengeance."Aenigma" is not one of the late, great Lucio Fulcis' best (it's sad to see him looking ill in his obligatory cameo appearance as a police inspector). It lacks the true overwhelming doom and gloom of his best nonsensical horror films. Mostly, it's good for laughs, although it's nice to see that Fulci hadn't lost his flair for lots of gore in his murder sequences. The plot, as you can see, is trite stuff, but a few memorable set pieces help to lift it out of the ordinary. For one thing, a stone statue comes to life. But the best and (rightly) most notorious scene involves a multitude of snails. The pounding rock music calls to mind the work of Fulcis' peer Dario Argento, while the amount of atmosphere is certainly respectable.The cast is all good looking, but they're all just a little too bland. Lamberti is passable, but also forgettable.An Italian / Yugoslavian co-production, this was filmed on location in both Boston and Serbia.Six out of 10.

After her snobby schoolmates accidentally send her into a coma, poor little Kathy has only one way to get even--with her mind! Eva, another schoolgirl, falls under the spell of Kathy's vengeful psyche, which is capable of horrible destruction using telekinesis and even killer snails to do her bidding. Soon the hallways at St. Mary's School are filled with screaming, and there's no way to escape. In the tradition of Carrie, this psychic shocker from legendary Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci, the man behind such outrageous cult favorites as The Beyond and Zombie, is filled with the visual style and gruesome madness his fans have come to expect. Available for the first time in America, this eerie look at the dark side of adolescence proves that girls might be made of sugar and spice, but they're not always nice!

Aenigma appears to be Lucio Fulci's attempt at 'Suspiria', as the plotting, atmosphere, locations and characters are all similar, and while this isn't essentially a 'bad' film, it certainly has nothing on Dario Argento's masterpiece. The influence from American cinema seems to have affected the great Italian maestro Lucio Fulci on this film, as he uses cheesy eighties songs a lot, and the way the plot plays out feels a lot like an American slasher, with the focus being kept on the kill scenes and bedtime activities of most of the school girls. The film forsakes logic at almost every turn, and much of the plot isn't explained and doesn't make a lot of sense. The central theme of a young, injured, girl possessing several members of her school and taking revenge on those that wronged her springs to mind immediately, as this isn't explained at all and that makes it hard to buy into the film. The way that Fulci handles this plot isn't very good either, as we are never made to care for her plight and therefore the fact that the plot doesn't make sense is made all the more irritating.Fulci does well with the atmosphere in the film, and the cinematography is rather nice also. As you would expect from a director who made his name with a whole load of blood and guts, there is no shortage of death scenes in this film. These scenes range from featuring severed limbs to gratuitous stabbings, but strangely enough; these scenes feel rushed and Fulci doesn't deliver a great deal of gore, which is probably the main reason why this film doesn't often get a very good write-up. Lucio Fulci has a bigger filmography than you would think, and many of his lesser known films - such as The Devil's Honey and Don't Torture a Duckling turn out to be his best. This film, however, is one of the director's more average efforts on the whole. I don't think Fulci really cared too much about the supernatural angle of the story, and so the film has ended up being disjointed and illogical. The acting and dialogue does nothing to alter this fact, as both are poor even for an Italian horror film. To be honest, I don't rate Aenigma as a complete dead loss; although it should be noted that I'm more tolerant of Fulci's films than most.