Overshadowed by Suspiria on the left and Tenebre on the right, Inferno is an absurd masterpiece of visual perfection. Argento’s descent into supernatural insanity is everything I could want from a film that changes main characters every 20 minutes and tosses narrative out the window—taking the the time to fuck my mind with eye popping colors in every frame of every shot. I’ve often said that one day Inferno will be my favorite Argento film, and that day may be here because I love it just as much as Suspiria.

For a movie that supposedly makes no sense, every single shot is perfectly planned to the last detail by an artist who meticulously paints every brush stroked sequence with intense beauty, and with Inferno, we’re treated to a cornucopia of lecherous madness, perversely displayed in a grandiose tapestry of absurd supernatural perfection.

Friendly reminder: Don’t fuck with Witches. Ever.

100

Hallways.

"Who's there?"

Staircases and cracked doors and fractured glass, luminous and dangerous colors, candelabras and cats, too.

"Hello?"

No answer.

Argento with no context. In other terms, every image will haunt the inner voids of your mind for the rest of your life.

Sometimes, you see a film and wonder what the fuck took you so long. There's always an ache of regret when this happens, yet at the same time it's like restorative magick. An alchemical concoction you've had tucked away on some shelf to be stumbled upon one day. For I have now imbibed and seek the coven's embrace...

"This old building is just full of secrets like that."

Freed from the constraints of a conventional plot (come on, are any of you really into Argento's plot lines anyway?), this gets right to the meat of peak Italian horror: nightmare-logic set-pieces! There's no Jessica Harper to consistently guide us through what it turns out is the real star of the movie: an imposing apartment building, the interiors nauseatingly saturated in Argento's favored purple/blue/red and angular features hovering in the foreground. Architecture and design is often prominent in Argento, but here it even takes part in the violence with killer curtains, slicing door knobs and guillotine windows. The passageways are dangerous, and the characters should know better, but they always probe and dig and pass through doors and windows and go down rabbit holes hoping to find...what? As with most dark fairy tales, it's only ever death and loss.

Every viewing of Inferno is a pleasure! There aren't many films that make perfect sense in their own right and no sense whatsoever simultaneously. Argento's story is carried not through logic but by feeling and sound. A curious girl looks for a key; drops her keys, then finds a key in a secret flooded room under a basement. A letter is carried from New York to Rome by notes of classic music. Time forsakes logic, spanning different periods in different places. The written word is power and books on public display become justification for murder in the wrong hands. Words pump through buildings like blood through veins. Argento's brushstrokes bathe every scene in colourful beauty. It's an experience and a work of art.

I'm not real sure how to rate this one. On the one hand, it's arguably Argento's most visually satisfying movie. The wild, nightmarishly vivid colors of Suspiria make a return in this thematic (???) sequel, along with a real suspense and tension in many of the set pieces (particularly the ones in the first half) that you just don't often get with Argento.

But then there's the plot, which goes beyond "comically incoherent" and into "hallucinogenic/oh god what did I take" territory. I have to assume this is intentional, though, as not only does Inferno keep switching between ostensible protagonists, none of them ever get a clue what the hell is happening.

My favorite line of the movie comes late, with one of the villains saying to the surviving hero something like "surely you've figured out who I am by now?" And the hero just shakes his head and goes "no!"

“May I ask a strange question?”

“How strange?”

…two lines that sum up Argento’s fantasy-fuelled follow-up to the iconic Suspiria.

This is a wonderfully nonsensical mess of surrealist horror filmmaking and undoubtedly Argento’s most misunderstood film, combining all the ingredients of his previous efforts to concoct a deliciously saturated journey into experiential terror.

If Suspiria was considered to be Argento’s blood-splattered fever dream, Inferno would be the disjointed scraps of a re-occurring nightmare that haunts your psyche for years to come…and what a beautiful nightmare it is.

A rich tapestry of sight, sound, architecture, mood, color and of course murder!

Great atmospheric film to get you in the mood for Halloween! And the lavish sets are absolutely divine!

Final Word: If the killer had a knife holder just think of all the lives that could have been saved ;-)

"But men call us by a single name..."

HOLY SHIT

that ending surely made up for all the slow stuff in the middle huh

(also it's so weird for irene miracle to not be playing a bitch)

I honestly cannot explain how badly I want to live in the world of this trilogy and have every single inch of my sad little life lit up the colour of blue violets and maraschino cherries

The most shocking thing about this film to me is how willing rose is to full on dive into sewer water, also the final song goes fucking HARD

This script definitely started out as either a rejected Buffy episode or a Phantom of the Opera fanfiction.

Как будто из Суспирии высосали всю душу. Ни одной новой режиссерской находки за фильм, а сцены убийств вызывают только смех. Видно, что даже кошкам и крысам не хотелось в этом играть.

"They call us death"

Me ha gustado más que Suspiria y eso que es peor... Hay cosas un poco absurdas pero las he evitado por completo porque 1. Me encanta la dirección y los colorines jope y 2. Esta película es una maravilla vaya esta trilogía parece lo mejor del mundo y estoy asustada de que la tercera (😳😳) me decepcione que tiene pinta...
Creo que lo único que quiero resaltar en esta review es el final porque es lo que más me ha gustado :p. Ha sido súper épico I love women literalmente el speech final wow paso de tanto talento ✋🏼😔.

Esse Dario é um danado viu, o cara sabe como matar os personagens dele com estilo

Very theatrical and odd. 

Not entirely sure what I was supposed to get out of this film but I was really engaged and interested by the whole thing. 

Some scenes felt a bit long but all in all I found myself getting lost in the strange world of this movie.

Pretty colors over a... soap opera set.