My Issue With Deep Red (With Spoilers)

Well, this may be a knife in the back for me as far as my reviewing career goes, but this movie's plot is completely nonsensical. This is a review of the movie Deep Red, the version which appears on Netflix. Whether other versions of the film are better is not a matter of dispute, as I have no seen those versions and am only reviewing this one.

The film in question is by a very well respected horror/giallo guru, Dario Argento. The name may sound familiar to more-than-casual horror fans as the man who helped Romero finance his famous Dawn of the Dead.

Argento, however, was well known before his connection to the Zombie King, having made several well received giallo/suspense films during the early-to-mid 1970s (Bird With The Crystal Plumage, 1970; Suspiria, 1977).

To people who don't know, Giallo films are whodunit mysteries, typically made by Italian film makers, that accentuate the violence of the murders. Giallo films are very closely connected to the slasher films of the '80s, as directors of eighties slashers took inspiration from these predecessors. Deep Red is a giallo, a murder mystery whodunit slasher, and that is precisely what the film gets wrong.

Diving into the film is a mystery in and of itself. There are three versions of the film. One that is 128 minutes long that was originally released in Italy (with dubbing on some scenes incomplete) one that Argento edited himself, which was 105 minutes long, and a US version that is 98 minutes long. The 105 minute version is supposedly the director's "definitive" version, and I'm pretty sure that's the version that's on Netflix.

Before I get into an angry rant, I wanted to make something clear. Let it not be said that this film isn't beautiful. It is wonderfully shot with a good budget and it looks better than most of the '80s films that it would inspire. The set locations are beautiful as well, and the lighting is pitch perfect. The suspense the film offers is pitch perfect as well, and the combination of suspense and lighting makes things even better.

Unfortunately, the backbone of the film, it's plot, suffers from being nonsensical. The main character, Marcus, is witness to the murder of a psychic who, earlier in the night, had a vision of the murderer at her show panel. She freaks out, which upsets the murderer, and she is murdered that night. Before she's completely dead, the murderer shoves her body through the window of her apartment, and Marcus witnesses the event in the street below. Running up to help her, he enters her apartment and finds her dead corpse. However, he is struck by a strange painting he saw in her apartment which now seems to be missing. He realizes that the painting is the key to solving the murder.

Also, whilst he was exploring the apartment before the police arrive, he looks out the window and manages to catch a glimpse of the killer, and he sees his friend Carlo below. Carlo, however, is unable to identify the murderer.

However, he then forgets about pursuing any leads about the painting even when he decides to do his own off-the-record investigation. You may argue that he forgets about the painting and that one of the themes of the film is memory. However, he wont stop talking about the damn painting to the characters he interacts with. He then proceeds to spend the entire film breaking into and destroying houses and schools, without regard of getting caught by the police. He demonstrates that he has no qualms of breaking and entering a property but he chooses not to return to the apartment where the psychic was murdered to get a closer look at her paintings again, choosing only to do so at the end of the film after we've sat through a convoluted mess of clues he chooses to follow that are also completely nonsensical.

All the time he is chasing leads, the murderer is killing more people, and each kill is preceded by a creepy children's song--the murderers calling card.

This song is the first clue, and that makes perfect sense that he should follow that lead. Then he is told by one of the psyhic's friends of a book that he had read by an author that said that sometimes in haunted houses you hear children singing and that usually indicates that there was a murder in that place. Or something. So Marcus decides he wants to read that book himself. The book tells of a folk legend about a house in Rome that someone heard screaming in, but when they investigated no one was there.

Marcus then decides that the person who wrote the book must KNOW SOMETHING about the murderer, even though that's a stupid conclusion at which one could arrive. Then all of a sudden, the book's author is killed by the murderer. For the rest of the film, we are given no explanation as to how these things are connected. As a matter of fact, with each of the clues we are given no explanation as to how they go back to the murderer in question.

So Marcus pursues another lead: visiting the house from the book that he read. He gets a key to the property by some guy, and proceeds to explore the house, where he defaces a wall and discovers a weird and creepy drawing of a child holding hands with some bleeding lunatic. He decides to come back that night, where glass from the window above falls down on his head. Why he is back at the house again, I'm not sure. Whether or not this drawing is connected to the murderer, also left pretty vague. He comes back a few nights later after he realizes that in the picture of the house that he tore from the author's book there's a window missing, he proceeds to deface the outside wall of the house. He then falls off the second story, concludes that's probably a bad idea, and then enters the house to try and get in this hidden room from the other side.

So already our hero has destroyed the inside wall of the house where the creepy painting was, he's destroyed the outside wall of the house before giving up on it, and then he destroys the inside wall of the house wherein he discovers a hidden room with a dead body.

This is a huge clue. Perhaps it means the killer is highly skilled in building houses, because they managed to seal off this room pretty nicely.

No, actually, the fact that the killer had the room sealed of course, is not mentioned or brought up ever again. Add to the fact that the killer would have had to find someone to come and seal the CREEPY DEAD BODY in the room without question and without turning the killer in...le sigh. This movie's plot is a mess.

The final clue is that the daughter of the house's caretaker has taken a liking to a grotesque drawing that looks similar to the painting on the wall of the house. She reveals that she found it at her school while being punished for doing something bad. So Marcus FUCKING BREAKS INTO THE SCHOOL. Is this school abandoned? Why are these details not given to us? This guy literally has no problems breaking and entering and destroying property that is not his, and yet he doesn't have the sense to go back to the psychic's apartment to look around.

They go through the archives of the school and Marcus figures out the mystery: the child who drew the pictures is his friend Carlo (remember him from way back?) Carlo tries to kill Marcus but fails, and he escapes before the police can catch him, only for him to have the silliest death scene I've ever witnessed in a film. Whilst running away, he hits a big truck and he foot is caught on some thing that is hanging off the truck's back end. He is dragged all over the road screaming and the drivers don't notice. This goes on for literally half a minute until the truck makes a turn and he bangs his head on the side of the road, knocking him out. Finally, to add insult to injury, a speeding car runs over and crushes his head, finally killing him. Tell me that is not the dumbest thing you've ever heard. It was more dumb to witness, trust me.

So Marcus concludes that the killer is his friend Carlo, even THOUGH HE KNEW THAT CARLO WASN'T THE KILLER BECAUSE HE SAW CARLO DOWN ON THE STREET AS THE KILLER WAS WALKING AWAY. What. The FUCK. So at this point Marcus is a complete idiot. Then he has...A REVELATION! The killer couldn't have been Carlo, because of THE REASONS I MENTIONED ABOVE.

So Marcus decides to do that thing that I've wanted him to do for the entire movie that he was way too stupid to do: he finally goes back to the psychic's apartment to look around. It is only here that he realizes how dumb he was. The odd painting he saw earlier in the film wasn't a painting at all. It was a mirror, and he realizes that he's seen the killer's face.

Wow, Marcus. You probably could have figured that one out if you just went back here earlier in the fucking film, because none of the clues you were given led you to that conclusion. It was only when you went back to the apartment did you figure it out, and the clues don't fucking matter. It isn't clear why the murderer does what they do anyway. This film's plot is a fucking joke. The movie is beautifully shot and the tension and suspense are there, but when the plot revolves around a complete idiot trying to solve a crime it falls apart.

The reason I'm so irate is that when it comes to a murder mystery, a movie/story that demands audience participation, you want to make everything absolutely clear to the audience and not have things be muddled up and characters who the audience can trust will not be illogical or unreasonable in their actions, UNLESS THAT'S THE POINT OF THE STORY.

If that was the whole point of the movie, that he was too dumb to solve the crime, the film makers didn't make much of an effort to confirm that to the audience. We are left to conclude that our main character, the mystery solver, is a complete idiot and a reckless lawbreaker.

I give this film a C-. For a mystery murder, this film does a horrible job with the mystery, and that kinda ruins the entire point of the film. The plot is frustrating as fuck but the visuals, creepiness, atmosphere and what not slightly make up for it.