Horror-A-Day: Day Twelve

Stendhal Syndrome is when people have intense reactions to art. Asia Argento's character Anna, faints in the museum during the beginning of the movie when she has hallucinations about a painting. While I think that the whole Stendhal Syndrome aspect of the story is very interesting, it seems like its just sort of added in there with no real connection to the actual plot. The movie is about a policewoman who after going to Florence to look for a serial rapist ends up getting attacked herself. Instead of him killing her, though, he becomes obsessed with her and stalks her, which in turn makes her go crazy. There are some pretty disturbing rape scenes in this movie, one of the more disturbing ones involves the rapist shooting a girl in the face afterwords, then looking through the bullet holes. He gets his though, after kidnapping Anna, she manages to find a way to escape, but instead of running away, she stabs him on either side of his neck, shoots him in the chest, beats him with her gun, drags him on the ground, then dumps him in the river. Throughout the rest of the movie, she starts losing her mind thinking that he is still alive.

One thing about this movie that bothered me, and it was the same with Opera, is that the voices are dubbed over. I don't understand why. You can clearly see that the actors are all speaking English, and yet its not their voices. Its especially noticable with Asia Argento. I think this movie would have been a lot better if they just used her normal lower pitched voice instead of the higher pitched one they have in the movie. One thing that I thought was really cool in this movie was that Anna had different looks for her different phases she goes through. In the beginning she has her long dark hair, and after she is first attacked she chops it all off and starts wearing more masculine clothes. Then, after she gets attacked again and fights back, she starts wearing white dresses and a blonde wig. I just think its really cool how there is a different look for each mental state that she is in.