At the heart of this nosedive is 1996′s The Stendhal Syndrome, which remains probably his most divisive film. It’s certainly his most frustrating, a rag-tag mess of a film that contains that at times feels like it’s up there with his best work and at others feels plodding, inept and workmanlike.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The setup is an absolute killer. Argento’s daughter Asia stars as Italian cop Anna Manni, who suffers a rare (real-life) affliction called Stendhal Syndrome which causes her to become overwhelmed by works of art. Her pursuit of Alfredo Grossi, a serial rapist and murderer (played The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann), leads her to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where she falls into a trance and collapses, leaving her in Grossi’s clutches. The opening twenty minutes is absolutely first rate; Argento’s oppressive direction of the Uffizi sequence effectively and economically conveys the impact of Anna’s unusual condition, and the dreamlike shots of her falling in and out of the various paintings are up there with his best visual gimmicks. Anna’s subsequent, traumatised attempts to both overcome her ordeal and rid herself of her affliction through painting are also well handled and visually striking.

Unfortunately Argento seems to lose interest in the Stendhal Syndrome itself less than an hour into the film – which is baffling, seeing as it is by far and away the most fascinating element. By the halfway point Anna is cured, Grossi is killed and the film seems to turn into a possession film, with Anna’s tormentor continuing to haunt her seemingly from beyond the grave. The ‘twist’ conclusion is blindingly obvious – I won’t spoil it here, but Anna’s sudden decision to wear a blonde wig and the unsubtle HIV test scene signpost it so far in advance that if you don’t work it out yourself you’re probably watching the wrong movie. The second half of the film is not only thunderingly inept, it’s thoroughly boring as well – the whole film clocks in at 118 minutes, which is really half an hour too long, especially given that Argento’s can’t sustain the initial premise for the full length of the film.

The lost potential of the setup is also reflected in Argento’s handling of Grossi himself. The director’s trademark is his suspenseful use of concealed, motif-based killers, yet Grossi’s identity is never in doubt and we see him raping and maiming his victims from the start. Not only is this uncharacteristically unsubtle and route-one for Argento (particularly unpleasant when his own daughter is playing the victim!) but it’s also a hugely missed opportunity; there’s surely much mileage in the idea of an art-obsessed psychopath exploiting a Stendhal Syndrome sufferer, but aside from a passing attempt to mirror Grossi’s smearing of his victims’ blood with Anna’s painting of herself to rid herself of her condition, he ignores this potentially profitable angle, to the film’s detriment.

Asia Argento herself has come in for some criticism over the years, but her performance is fairly serviceable, and she’s particularly effective in both the Syndrome scenes and as the terrified victim. She’s far less engaging in the second half, but given how the script unsubtly calls for her to become an enigmatic mad woman for no real reason until the end, there’s probably not much more she could have done with the material. She is, however, miscast; aged 20 at the time of filming, she looks even younger, which makes the police department’s decision to send her – solo – to another city in pursuit of a serial rapist and murderer even less believable. An older actress with greater presence might have been able to paper over some of the inconsistencies in the script, but instead she leaves the film’s flaws open for all to see.

Technically, the film ranges from good to unremarkable. The much-criticised use of CGI (it was apparently the first Italian film to do so) is indeed wretched, but is thankfully only restricted to a couple of brief shots. Argento continues his move into more naturalistic (i.e. boring) colours and composition, but some of his angles are interesting, particularly in the aforementioned Uffizi sequence, Marie’s murder in the gallery and the bizarre evocation of Alice in Wonderland as a blonde Anna runs around her apartment in a blue dress at the end (this may have been unintentional). Ennio Morricone’s score is pretty good too, wrapped around a looping motif that sounds by turns sinister and comforting depending on the context.

Argento has since claimed that The Stendhal Syndrome has an anti-censorship message, and that it was designed as a riposte to his critics: just as many of his films were cut because of the corrupting influence of their images, so Anna is overwhelmed by pictures on a wall. By a weird coincidence, in the same year Wes Craven, a director who early films were frequently cut to bits by censors, released Scream, a metatextual horror in which the killer has been depraved by horror films. But whereas this self-reflection is evident throughout Scream, it’s nowhere to be found here, and one suspects Argento made this up post-facto. The most maddening aspect of The Stendhal Syndrome is not that it’s simply bad, but that in patches it’s really good. But for the first time, Argento, once the king of leitmotif horror, can’t retain a handle on the fascinating ideas and images he sets up at the start of the film, and once he steps away from the art theme he never once offers anything interesting or developed to replace it, instead offering half-baked twists and tedious procedural drama. Sadly, The Stendhal Syndrome marks a turning point for Argento; after the halfway point he’d never make another good film again. A partially interesting failure, the film stands as both as his last gasp of greatness and the start of the terminal mediocrity that was to follow.

Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film unashamedly in the mould of Creepshow and Tales From the Crypt, which themselves largely took their cues from the horror comics of the 50s and The Twilight Zone. It tells four separate but overlapping stories set in a small town celebrating Halloween. As with almost all anthology movies, these vary in tone and impact, but since the film a whole runs to a lean 79 minutes none are allowed to outstay their welcome. All comply to the tried and trust formula of a spooky setup followed by a gruesome twist ending. The slightest story, “The Principal”, features a brilliant turn from Dylan Baker, channeling the likes of Re-animator’s Jeffery Combs, propping up an otherwise fairly thin plot. “Surprise Party” and “The School Bus Massacre Revisited” are more substantial, the former boasting a terrifically full-on conclusion and the latter featuring some genuinely impressive atmospherics.

Like Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat concludes with a one-hander featuring a veteran actor being tormented in his home; but instead of EG Marshall and thousands of insects, here we have Brian Cox and a pumpkin-headed demon called Sam. This segment is the undoubted highlight of the film. Sam is a brilliant creation; in a twisted take on A Christmas Carol, he pops up throughout the film as a warning to those who fail to respect the traditions of Halloween, but he reserves particular ire for Cox’s cantankerous Mr Kreeg, whom he pursues until he changes his ways. Cox gives a no-holds-barred performance, and the fight descends into some hugely enjoyable Evil Dead II-style slapstick/splatter.

As you might have guessed, Trick ‘r Treat isn’t hugely original, but Dougherty’s brilliantly witty, atmospheric direction holds everything together. In anchoring everything to a single town, he creates a real sense of location that is at once familiar but at times hauntingly alien; in “Surprise Party”, for example, the town’s festivities very quickly move from being jovial to threatening. The film is filmed with memorable and striking imagery: the aforementioned Sam, the decayed school bus half submerged in the lake, Kreeg’s front garden filled with carved pumpkins. The mood may predominantly be light-hearted, but Dougherty shows such craft it’s hard not to be dazzled.

The main point of divergence between Trick ‘r Treat and its predecessors is Dougherty’s decision (apparently taken during post-production) to cut between the stories rather than telling them in series. The downside to this is that the first 20 minutes or so are largely fairly leisurely-paced setup, to the extent that I was starting to wonder whether or not the film had been somewhat over-praised. Nevertheless, once all the stories are in motion, he delivers a genuine thrill ride that largely avoids the pacing problems that blight other anthologies.

Perhaps inevitably for a film that wears its influences so strongly on its sleeves, Trick ‘r Treat feels simultaneously very 80s and very 50s. But in an era where mainstream horror is becoming increasingly po-faced and misanthropic in its shocks, to see a modern, studio genre film that revels in a sense of well-crafted scary fun is hugely refreshing. It’s obviously a travesty that mainstream audiences were denied the opportunity to see this film on the big screen, but it points to bigger problems in Hollywood’s current handling of horror. This film easily stands alongside the likes of Creepshow and Carpenter’s Halloween as a definitive Halloween movie, one that you will want to watch – in company – every October. Yet the studios seem content to mark Halloween with the grungy nastiness of the Saw films rather than something far more inclusive, accessible and in keeping with the spirit of the season like this. (British readers who think this is overstating the case may like to reflect on just how widely Halloween is celebrated in the US). And Trick ‘r Treat impresses because despite the gore, murder and dismemberment, it retains the atmosphere of good, clean fun. So chalk this up as yet another horror blog telling you to buy this film, watch it, and tell your friends. As Sam is keen to stress, Halloween traditions must be respected…

You can’t help but be left wondering if this is what he was attempting to do with Opera. The question has little to do with the setting (nor indeed title) but arise more because of Argento’s use of raw emotion as the central plot driver, often at the expense of coherent storytelling. Such an elevation might have been disastrous in a lesser director, but as ever with Argento you’re willing to moderate your critical faculties somewhat as you get drawn into his confused, uneasy but always beautifully rendered world.

The tale of a young operetta mysteriously targeted by a deranged killer might seem perfectly conceived to provide Argento with a fodder conveyor belt, but the opera backdrop actually serves as a nice distraction and allows him to indulge in some uncharacteristically self-indulgent fun. You can’t help but see something of Argento in Marco, the horror film director turned rather harried opera director, and you wonder whether the constant criticism of the latter (due, we learn, to his liberal re-interpretation of Verdi’s Macbeth) accounts for the former’s reluctance to give opera a go. Ian Charleson’s snarling performance suggests that it might well be. We (sadly) never get to enjoy Marco’s crow-laden Macbeth for anything longer than a few brief snippets, but it does provide Argento with just the right backdrop to set in place the best revelation of a murderer since Quincy, M.E. On a more serious level, the opera background initially gives Argento a relatively staid and comforting bolt-hole to retreat too in between the flashes of anarchistic slaughter. On every sensual level, the opulently rendered theatre provides welcome relief from the usual Dario butchery in the way that his music school did in Suspiria.

While seeing opera in film always adds a nice layer of bombast to proceedings, Argento deftly allows the edifice of what is happening on stage to sink into the background and allows the underlying terror and tragedy to bubble the surface. That is the undoubted strength of Opera, transforming what might otherwise have been a rather lumpy, incoherent and self-indulgent project into a film of stunning vision and genuine merit. Undoubtedly, there are some splutters, stops and starts along the way. It perhaps takes a little longer than it should for Betty’s predicament to be elevated from the bog standard hunter’s prey to tragic heroine (something the distractingly beautiful Christina Marsillach handles with real aplomb, despite Argento’s purported difficulties with her). Those are minor quibbles though, and they quickly fade into obscurity when we’re forced to step back and behold the patchwork of deliciously macabre situations visited upon Betty in their tragic totality. At that point you realise that opera’s loss is horror’s gain.

That said, it’s hard to gauge whether or not mentioning the musical aspect would help or hinder the audience’s expectations, given that the actual music is a world away from the West End fare touted by Graham Norton on Saturday night television. Composer and writer Stephen Sondheim’s CV includes an eye-opening number of top-bracket shows (including lyrical duties on the superb West Side Story) but the richness and complexity of the music here, first performed in 1979, is still startling. The score’s angular melodies and leitmotif structures are clearly more influenced by opera than by its Broadway peers, yet despite the lack of conventional showstoppers Sweeney Todd is characterised by a lightness of touch both lyrically and musically that infuses the grizzly story with a wickedly black sense of humour. In particular, his take on Todd himself is a triumph, maintaining a strong core characterisation whilst continually readjusting the audience’s position towards him; almost simultaneously he appears as a sympathetic victim, an irresistible maverick and an irredeemable villain, yet Sondheim never resorts to broad stroke when making these shifts. Such is the deftness of the writing that it seems entirely consistent that Todd spits invective about London’s depravity in one scene before cracking jokes in the next (such as his hilarious debunking of Pirelli’s miracle hair-growth formula).

Such strong source material gives director Tim Burton an enviable canvas with with to work, but despite the wider (and wilder) visual opportunities that film affords over the the stage, he bravely decides to focus more closely on the characters than their environment – even to the extent of trimming the chorus numbers so that the songs are performed solely by the main players. His take on 19th century London is beautifully atmospheric, but for the most part is only glimpsed at as the majority of the action takes place within the claustrophobic surroundings of Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. Inevitably this puts even more pressure on the cast; Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham-Carter are hardly surprising choices for a Tim Burton film, but their close relationship with the director means that they are completely integrated with his vision, and here they absolutely soar, tackling Sondheim’s challenging music with ease and never once letting the singing get in the way of their performances. Depp is absolutely mesmerising, and wholly convinces as the man whose soul has been almost completely destroyed by both the wrongs done to him and the urge for revenge. He is well matched by an excellent supporting cast, which includes Alan Rickman on fine form as Todd’s nemesis Judge Turpin, and both Timothy Spall and Sascha Baron-Cohen chew the scenery in a highly enjoyable fashion.

If the film falters at all, it’s in Burton’s slightly clumsy handling of twists in the plot that were never that surprising in the first place and require a more delicate touch. The identity of the mad homeless woman who watches over events is already a dramatic inevitability, but here it’s blindingly obvious who she is from the outset before we even know what role she is to play. Elsewhere, another promising setup which has Todd’s estranged daughter Joanna hiding in his shop dressed in boys’ clothing peters out without a really satisfying resolution.

These, however, are minor nitpicks in an outstanding film. The leisurely pace might give one cause to wonder whether the movie will live up to the story’s lurid reputation, but once Todd embarks on his killing spree in the final third it descends into an unflinchingly-framed bloodbath that could give most other modern gore movies a run for their money. Given the sorry state of mainstream musical theatre at present, it’s understandable that one might be inclined to give the film a wide berth, but to do so would be a mistake as Sweeney Todd admirably reaffirms the form’s potential. And although there is the niggling doubt that Burton is simply becoming a go-to guy for big-screen adaptations of quirky classics (this film is bookended by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his upcoming take on Alice In Wonderland) it’s hard to dispute that the source material and director are well-matched here, and that Burton is once again at the top of his game. Highly recommended.

The exploding head in question occurs around 15 minutes into the film, and its fame (or infamy) does little to rob it of its impact. It’s a superbly realised moment, both technically (it’s far more accomplished than the similar rupture at the start of Dawn of the Dead) and directorially, hitting a huge crescendo after a seriously creepy buildup in which Michael Ironside’s rogue telepath (or “scanner”) Revok engages in a battle of wills with a hapless fellow telepath giving a demonstration of his abilities. It’s the high point of a sensational opening half hour that both thrills – Revok, head of an underground group of scanners who are plotting a world takeover, subsequently unleashes some serious carnage on the cops who try to arrest him – and tantalises us with a central plot arc that promises much excitement to follow.

Unfortunately, that excitement never really comes. The main plot, in which tortured scanner Cameron Vale is enlisted by security firm ConSec to infiltrate and bring down Revok’s organisation, sadly fails to fulfill its undeniable potential. Apparently production on the film started while the script was still unfinished, and this would serve to explain some of its problems; after a blistering start, the pace slows down almost unbearably, and the action degenerates into a series of somewhat disconnected, vaguely unsatisfactory setpieces, which increasingly rely on the scanners showing hitherto unmentioned abilities in order to further the plot. One example is the sequence in which Vale successfully blows up a computer using his mind via the telephone, which allows the use of some fairly impressive pyrotechnics, but does little to shake the suspicion that everyone was making it up as they went along.

The other problem is that the film criminally underuses Michael Ironside, whose sneering, understated performance is one of the highlights. Revok is undoubtedly the most interesting character, and it’s perhaps understandable that Cronenberg wished to preserve his intrigue by keeping him to the shadows, but considering how strongly his presence is felt at the start of the film and how the climax depends on him, his presence is sorely missed in the middle and would have livened things up no end. It’s always a pleasure to see Patrick McGoohan, here in the role of Dr Paul Routh, but he’s unfortunately hampered by an accent that is presumably American but often wanders into several other nationalities. Stephen Lack’s performance as Vale is a genuinely mixed bag; initially his wide-eyed rabbit in the headlights persona is well suited to the scenes in which he discovers the power of his own mind for the first time, but when required to be commanding and heroic he quickly looks out of his depth.

The climactic showdown between Revok and Vale is pretty decent and definitely raises the excitement levels somewhat but it still falls some way short of the balls-out mind war you might have been expecting at the beginning. Which brings us back to that exploding head. In that one scene, the film simultaneously excels itself and peaks too soon; it’s a textbook lesson in how one iconic moment can raise the levels of expectation to a point where disappointment can only follow. Scanners’ reputation in the public mind rests on a single shot; it’s probably best enjoyed as “The One Where The Guy’s Head Explodes” and nothing more.

As is probably clear from the plot summary, Tenebrae finds Argento in a self-reflexive mood. Apparently, he was inspired to make the film by a disturbing series of telephone death threats he received from a deranged fan, and it’s not hard to see fairly obvious parallels between Peter Neal, the crime novelist celebrated for the lurid brutality of his prose, and Argento himself, who if nothing else really pushed the envelope in terms of the elegant, poetic presentation of gut-wrenching brutality. There are some fun scenes which play on the director’s reputation including a sequences in which Neal is quizzed on whether or not his novels are sexist by a feminist journalist (who, it transpires, is a lesbian – which is endemic of Argento’s somewhat passé approach to gender politics; in any case, she’s one of the first to get butchered), and the policeman Inspector Giermani is in many ways the archetypal dumb fan – enraptured by Neal’s work but incapable of really understanding it.

That said, Tenebrae isn’t really a commentary or defence by Argento of his work, but the parallels between the director and his character do add a certain mischievous frisson to the proceedings. It also serves to make the grisly twist at the end of the film even more ghoulish if you think too long about its implications. On a first viewing, I’ll admit to finding the movie’s resolution somewhat gimmicky compared to, say, Deep Red, but on re-watching it does work on a meta-level and adds to the blood-soaked aura of fun that pervades the film. Like Deep Red, Argento has all the pieces in place so that the final unveiling of the killer makes narrative sense; the red herrings he throws you throughout are all accounted for and the final set-piece is a hugely satisfying bloodbath.

One area in which Tenebrae continues to receive criticism is in the look of the film. True, compared to the likes of Suspiria the modernist architectural structures in which the film takes place feel overly stark and washed out, but in some ways this more muted backdrop boils down Argento’s trademark presentation of murder to its very essence, focussing his camera on just the victim and the murderer. There are some incredibly arresting scenes in this film – most notably the celebrated panning shot over the top of a building tracking the killer’s pursuit of the people inside, but also incidental shots such as the close-up of the gloved hand of the killer smashing a lightbulb with a razor blade. Combined with Goblin’s thumping incidental score – probably the most overtly synthpop they’d contributed to an Argento film at this point, and which at times even starts to foreshadow Faithless – Tenebrae sometimes takes on the feel of a music video, but whilst it’s somewhat removed from the sonic and visual palette of his previous works it’s still every bit as stylised as his great works and, in its own way, just as beautiful.

The acting’s pretty passable for a dubbed Italian movie as well; Anthony Franciosa is clearly having a whale of a time in the lead role, and he makes a nice double act with Daria Nicolodi, aka Mrs Dario Argento and frequent collaborator. Ultimately, Tenebrae is probably not as significant a movie milestone as Deep Red or Suspiria, but as a rip-roaring murder mystery it’s probably one of his slickest, most taut and most enjoyable films. The prevailing impression is that of a director at the top of his game having a ball with his material, and sense of fun that runs through this gory shocker is utterly infectious. Highly recommended.

Connelly is probably the film’s best asset, giving an appealing and spirited performance as Jennifer Corvino, the sleepwalking daughter of a film star who discovers she has an affinity with insects. She forms quite a compelling double-act with Donald Pleasance as the wheelchair-bound Dr McGregor, who helps her investigate a string of murders in the posh Swiss finishing school where she is a pupil. Phenomena was the first film where Argento recorded sync sound rather than adding all dialogue during post-production, which really helps the performances breathe in a more naturalistic way than one normally expects from an Argento movie – even if Pleasance’s Scottish accent is decidedly odd. Sadly, this treatment was only lavished on the two leads; for all the other actors it was business as usual, which makes the traditional dubbing seem even more stilted than normal. Argento regular (and one-time partner) Daria Nicolodi fares particularly badly in this respect; her opening scene in the car with Connelly is hellish, although matters improve further into the film.

Stylistically, Argento basically throws in everything but the kitchen sink. There are nods to the giallo – particularly in the opening beheading of a lost tourist – but generally the murder sequences are less audaciously stylised than before, relying more on shocks and scares and thus pushing the film more into the territory of a supernatural thriller. Even the climax (involving a monkey and a razor blade, no less) feels muted compared to the lingering nightmares of previous films. Equally uncharacteristic is how the look of the film is defined by its exterior shots. Argento is a master of colour, but usually allows each film’s palette to emerge through carefully controlled interiors. Phenomena, on the other hand, is flavoured by the cool blues and greens of the lush Swiss countryside, which infused some of the films most successful sequences, such as Jennifer’s first sleepwalk, her pursuit of the firefly or her escape on the water from the killer’s lair. Conversely, this means some of the interior sequences (such as the killer’s pit of decaying bodies) feel more drab than they should do. But despite these deviations, Phenomena is still a very attractive film, with more than its fair share of blissful moments – most notably the dazzling scene in which Jennifer, taunted by her classmates, summons a swarm of flies which crowd the windows of the school.

The music – another key weapon in Argento’s arsenal – also suffers from some bizarre creative decisions. His house band, Italian prog rockers Goblin, were by this point down to one member, Claudio Simonetti, whose cues make up the bulk of the score. By the mid 80s, Simonetti was operating in full-blown electro-pop territory rather than the more organic textures that make up the classic Goblin sound, but there’s some great stuff here including the memorable main title theme, an epic soprano and drum machine blow-out (although oddly, I don’t remember hearing my favourite cue from the soundtrack album, “Jennifer’s Friends”, on the actual film). Unfortunately, many of the important action scenes are accompanied by heavy metal tracks from the likes of Motorhead and Iron Maiden rather than original material. Argento’s use of contemporary-sounding music has always been bombastic to say the least; part of the appeal of his best films is how key sequences are framed almost like music videos (such as the razor blade through the light bulb in Tenebrae) but the use of fully-blown songs here feels like self-parody rather than a step forward, with the lyrics detracting from the action rather than complementing it.

But the prevailing problem with the film is that it’s simply too long. Tellingly, when it was released in the USA (under the ridiculous title of Creepers) around 20 minutes was cut from it to improve the pacing. Much of the first hour is given over to scene-setting, with the story only really kicking into overdrive around the 45 minute mark. Thankfully, things speed up a little in the second half, and the final chase through the killer’s hideout is brilliantly tense, if more than a little reminiscent of Don’t Look Now.

Ultimately, Phenomena isn’t exactly top-tier Argento but it certainly doesn’t deserve the pasting it has received over the years from some quarters. Its flaws generally arise from a surfeit of ambition rather than a lack of it, and he throws enough ideas and techniques against the wall to ensure that every misfire is matched by several successes. Yes it’s long, yes the music’s occasionally a bit rubbish, but it’s still an enjoyable and at times very exciting film – plus it’s hard not to look fondly on a film which ends with Jennifer Connelly hugging a monkey holding a blood-stained blade. Definitely worth a look.

But while Scream may sit at the top of a very long downward spiral that we’re still sliding down ten years later, it’s also a rather good film. Craven’s tale of a group of horror-obsessed teens who notice eerie parallels with the movies they love when their schoolmates start being killed off one by one is both a love letter to the genre movies he references and a solidly-crafted slasher in its own right. The most common criticism of the film is that it substitutes irony for scares, and that the self-referencing undoes any real potential for terror, but the aspects for which the film is most remembered – the ‘rules’, the silly discussions of Halloween – are really only window dressing. For all Craven mocks the formula, he sticks to it rigidly and deploys it artfully, and the films most intense moments – especially the opening sequence and the climax – are as nerve-shredding as any of their predecessors.

This is essentially the film’s triumph. Craven’s paid his dues as a horror auteur, meaning he’s skilful enough to walk the walk as well as talk the talk; he can deconstruct what he’s doing without detracting from it. The final scene, which lays bare the killer’s motivation – essentially, he was warped by watching too many horror movies – casts the jovial name-dropping of films into a more sinister light. The ‘rules’ aren’t just the babblings of a know-it-all teen, they’re a murderer’s modus operandi, which is shown to have real consequences for the other characters. Far from patronising or belittling the works on John Carpenter and his peers, this raises them to a far greater level of importance – and rules or no rules, Scream at least managed to keep me guessing until the very end.

Perhaps the biggest irony of all is that a man who’s had a film banned in several countries on the grounds that it might deprave and corrupt should score his biggest commercial success with a movie in which an impressionable teen is corrupted by horror movies. Fans of Last House on the Left and the like may consider this to be Craven’s sell out moment, but it’s too sophisticated for that. Sure, there’s a surface level of meta-detail that can complicate the issue, but essentially Scream is an honest-to-god slasher that follows the rules and is all the better for it.

In much the same way that The Blair Witch Project capitalised on its unexpected success by immediately rushing out a sequel, fans of the diabolical ‘Jigsaw’ had to wait for less than a year for the follow-up to Saw. In light of this it shouldn’t be too surprising that Saw II offers up very little in the way of fresh ideas, but should we really have expected anything else? After all, the strength of the original was in watching helpless victims being psychologically and physically dissected in fiendishly cruel ways. Is this enough to carry a sequel though?

I think it is, just about. Saw II is a little more polished than the first, with the same frantic death scenes but this time layered between more a deliberate approach to telling the story. It helps that we actually get to meet Jigsaw this time (Tobin Bell stealing the show), and though the joust between him and Eric Matthews eventually becomes a little tiresome it does add an interesting dimension to the scenario and is the only really interesting point of reference. The attempts to inject Jigsaw’s motivation with a sense of morality are a little heavy-handed at times, but his rationale of human beings living in a cruel world where violence can (and should) be used for redemption as well as to inflict suffering is something to think about whilst people are having bits hacked out of them. As with the original, we have to wait until the dying seconds to find out the full import of his quasi-philosophy but it does flourish into a cruelly ironic finale which makes up for the boredom that occasionally creeps in during the rest of the film.

This time the scares are played out on a bigger stage, with several human lab-rats provided for our titillation in a sufficiently moody house whose resemblance to the Resident Evil games is, I suspect, more contrived than coincidental. Because of the duel-layered plot the goings on in the house often seem to slip away from the attention of the audience for a bit too long, which means that when the nasty bits do kick off it sometimes feels gratuitous. Unlike the original it is difficult to feel any sympathy with any of Jigsaw’s victims which again makes the elaborate trials that are inflicted on them feel a little hollow. The refreshing originality of Saw meant that subsequent films would always be hard pressed to stretch out what is a pretty finite premise. Saw II just about manages to tread water and will undoubtedly keep fans of the original happy for an hour or so.

It’s probably worth pointing out at the outset that this film contains gore, and lots of it – and for many, this is where its appeal (or at least its notoriety) will lie. Whilst some of the bloodier scenes tend to slip into Giallo / exploitation cliche (there are several tight close-ups of expanses of flesh being pierced and punctured – so far, so Argento), there is also some nauseatingly effective imagery here, particularly in the dreamlike opening sequence, in which George finds the piled-up remains of a butchered body in the bottom of his bed. Thankfully, Scavolini chooses to give us more than simply a catalogue of atrocities; although the plot becomes suspiciously similar to that of Halloween (particularly when George begins to stalk his wife and children wearing a spooky mask), the direction is sufficiently stylised and distinctive so as to prevent it looking like a straight rip-off. Particularly effective is Scavolini’s non-linear approach to narrative; the main story is very clearly delineated (with caption cards marking “The First Night”, “The Second Night”, and so on), but at the same time we are drip-fed elements of backstory via flashback which helps us piece together what is going on. The flashbacks play out – in excruciating detail – the childhood event which left George so scarred; even though it’s pretty clear what actually happened long before Scavolini spells it out for us, there’s a satisfying sense of narrative closure, given added punch by the implication that George’s son CJ, having escaped his murderous father, may end up inheriting this legacy of violence.

It’s an interesting setup, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite gel mainly due to the film’s erratic pacing. It sags terribly in the middle, and the plot strand concerning George’s experimental therapy is left frustratingly undeveloped. In places the film feels unnecessarily padded; CJ’s compulsive lying feels like it was only included in order to extend the plot, and it’s an aspect of his character that’s left without any narrative payoff. The opening is quite unsettlingly bewildering, but the stalk ‘n’ slash scenes of the film’s second half have a familiarity to them mainly due to their similarity with the aforementioned Halloween. The mainly domestic setting means that the production values feel a lot less threadbare than many of the other nasties, and most of the dialogue is passable, but the acting never rises above adequate; what the film needs is a knockout performance, but most of the participants are largely unmemorable. That said, special mention must be made of the child who plays the young George in the flashback scenes, who brings a quiet solemnity to his role that is actually quite suspenseful.

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain is no masterpiece, but it’s not a disaster either. Lurking beneath the technical limitations of low-budget cinema and the unoriginal premise, there’s an interesting approach at work that makes the film watchable at the very least. Nightmares is, surprisingly, a film I’d quite like to see remade – as it stands, it promises much but ultimately doesn’t quite deliver.