Inferno- Treating the Discoveries like Art

I never was one of Argento's greatest fans. True, only last Saturday I recommended Suspiria to someone, but only due to those amazing 15 minutes. Inferno, on the other hand, doesn't have this amazing quality to it which enables me to recommend it even though I don't really like the movie. Inferno is not a bad movie per se, it is just not exactly my style of horror it seems.

If I had to describe its plot in a few sentences, I would describe it as a religious kinda-slasher, with three goddesses as the slashers. I mean, there's more to that, but it will be too much of a spoiler. Let's just say that if you know what an Argento's movie looks like, you'll probably know what Inferno looks like.

And still, there are things to learn from this movie. After all, he may not be my cup of tea, but he is still one of the masters and this movie shows that. For me, the greatest takeaway from Argento's movies was always the horrifying discoveries of the bodies. Argento made them into a sick tour-de-force, showing us the monstrosity of his monsters through the way they let others see their work.

It can be said, and it won't even be too farfetched to say that, that Argento's monsters take their victims as canvases for a new painting, for a work of art. Maybe this is the reason that in some of his best movies the victims are also of artistic upbringing, as maybe they will be the ones who will best appreciate it. Anyway, though, the discoveries of the bodies are usually more sick and frightening than the killings themselves, and that's hard as they are usually presented to us almost exactly one after the other.

And this gives us a glimpse to the monsters' psyches, and adds a little bit of morbid horror, taking Shakespeare's comment that life is but a show to the extreme, up to eleven. And we can use that in our games also. We can make those discoveries like sick jokes, or like the climax of a movie or of a theater show.

Treat those discovery scenes like the pinnacle of your movie, Argento says to us, and actually it might work. It might work really-really well, if we'll give it a chance. True, most of his death scenes (and as such the bodies discovered) are pretty gory, but if we'll limit the gore to these scenes like he does… it may prove far more frightening than one would think. After all, he does know what he's doing.

And that's it for today. How about you? What did you think of this movie? And what did you learn from it?