Between full-length features and blu-ray extras, there have been so many films over the years that have tackled the life and work of legendary Italian cult filmmaker Dario Argento that even his most devoted fans may find themselves wondering if there is anything new to say about him, especially since even they would mostly concede that his recent output has been somewhat uneven (to put it politely). At first, Simone Scafidi’s Dario Argento Panico seems to have an intriguing hook by following him to an isolated hotel where he is supposedly writing his new screenplay (presumably the recent disappointment Dark Glasses), a throwback to the process that he employed in the earlier days of his career. However, those hoping to observe the creative process of the man who gave us such genre masterpieces as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebrae and Opera will be disappointed to hear that we only get to see him at work for a few seconds at most and most of his screen time is devoted to answering questions spanning his entire career. Bolstering his commentary are talking head interviews with a wide array of figures, ranging from family members such as his daughters Asia and Fiore (both of whom appeared in his films in what would have been discomfiting moments even without the parent-child relationship underscoring them), friends and colleagues like Michele Soavi, Luigi Cozzi and Lamberto Bava and famous admirers like Guillermo del Toro, Gasper Noe and Nicholas Winding Refn.
Unlike, say, the documentary De Palma, which was a film that tried to make the case for an often misunderstood filmmaker to those unfamiliar or outright dismissive of its work, Panico is a project that is clearly aiming for those who are already sold on Argento and who are probably as knowledgeable about his career as anyone involved with its production. While the result is hardly the definitive work that one might hope for—it works around the inevitable hurdle of his sketchy work from the last two decades by pretty much ignoring it entirely (which is particularly baffling in regards to Mother of Tears, considering the amount of time devoted to Suspiria and Inferno, the previous entries in the Three Witches trilogy that it concluded)—and the discussions of the undisputed classics are not particularly revelatory, the film does yield some interesting moments of its own. There are observations from sister Fiore about growing up in a family that was synonymous with Italian cinema and it does give more focus than usual to his earlier films, even delving into the one non-horror title in his oeuvre, the odd comedy-Western The Five Days. While most of the talking head commentary consists of little more than polished anecdotes, del Toro has some genuinely astute things to say about Argento’s films and Scafidi scores a major coup by getting actress Cristina Marsillach to finally open up about the increasingly difficult working relationship she had with him while starring in Opera.
The most compelling scenes in Panico are the ones in which Asia Argento discusses her personal and professional relationship with her father with great candor. A filmmaker herself, she brings an interesting angle to her observations about working with him, especially in regards to the shooting of such discomfiting scenes as the rape sequence in The Stendhal Syndrome and the sex scene in The Phantom of the Opera (which was done on a day when her grandmother happened to be visiting the set) and the fact that he refused to speak to her for two years when she turned down the lead in The Card Player in order to direct her own film, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Her insights are so intriguing that it almost makes you wish that the entire film had been based around her observations of her celebrated parent in the manner of what Charlotte Gainsbourg did with her recent film about her late mother, Jane Birkin. In the end, Panico is not quite the definitive Argento documentary that fans may be hoping to see but of all the ones that have been made over the years, it clearly comes closest to hitting that mark.
As the new horror-comedy Departing Seniors begins, gay high-school senior Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) is hoping to make it through the final week of classes—mostly by preparing photos for the yearbook and avoiding the gay-bashing cruelties of some of his more loathsome classmates—before setting off to college in the fall. That becomes more complicated when one of the more aggressively homophobic jocks is brutally murdered by someone sporting a white mask that is the symbol of the drama department. As other oppressors begin to die off in grisly ways, Javier and best friend Bianca (Ireon Roach) try to winnow down the potential suspects, ranging from fellow student and crush object William (Ryan Foreman) to jock-with-a-secret Brad (Sasha Kuznetsov) to sympathetic English teacher Mr Arda (Yang Gellman). If that weren’t enough, after a prank ends with him suffering a head injury, Javier begins to have psychic visions of upcoming killings that both help and hinder his efforts to end the murder spree for good.
Essentially a cross between Scream and The Dead Zone, with a heaping helping of Heathers-style snark tossed into the mix, the big innovation in director Clare Cooney’s feature debut comes in the form of taking the gay character that might have made for an early victim in a formulaic slasher exercise and making them the central character. That is an intriguing launch point, I suppose, but the movie needs more than just that in order to succeed and it never quite gets it. Although Diaz-Silverio and Roach make for engaging leads, they are let down by a screenplay by Jose Nateras that becomes increasingly predictable and familiar as it goes on (this is one of those films where the identity of the killer is so seemingly obvious from the start that you find yourself thinking that it has to be a red herring, only to discover that they are they guilty party after all) in ways that the weirder elements are unable to overcome. Cooney never quite manages to figure out a way to bring any real tension to the proceedings, though she handles the material with enough smooth proficiency to indicate that make you want to see what she might be able to accomplish with a stronger script. Departing Seniors is certainly better than the last couple of Scream films and it does contain a few witty moments here no there but it just never finds the spark that might have elevated it into the kind of stylish take on slasher tropes that it is aiming to be. (That said, keep an eye on the guy playing the EMT pushing the stretcher during the final moments—call me crazy but he has star potential written all over him.)
At the center of Scrambled is Nellie (Leah McKendrick, also making her feature debut as writer-director), a woman in her mid-30s who is in an extended personal and professional rut that is not made any easier by the relentless hectoring by her father (Clancy Brown) that she should settle down and have a child before it is too late. When a medical issue means that her window of opportunity for having kids will be closing sooner than anticipated, the still-unsure Nellie decides to give herself a little more time by undergoing the long, expensive and not-entirely-certain process of freezing her eggs. While doing this, she finds herself attending a seemingly endless string of weddings or baby showers—the opening finds her calming down her best friend (Ego Nwodim) at her wedding and learning that she is pregnant—and this inspires her to reunite with a number of past exes to see if any of them might potentially be worth reconsidering.
Obviously, the subject of fertility issues and the often-grim lengths that some women are forced to go through in order to overcome them are not necessarily the kind of thing that lends itself easily to comedy, especially one that is also willing to go the raucous route, such as in the opening sequence in which she ends up taking molly at a wedding reception and goes nuts. McKendrick certainly deserves credit for even attempting such a thing but she just doesn’t quite have the skill to make the extreme tonal changes—ranging from unapologetically rude humor involving awkward hookups, her largely lame exes and even the occasional fart joke to more serious moments involving miscarriage and the pains of potential motherhood—come off to the degree that they need to in order to succeed. (There are a couple of big speeches towards there end that are so relentlessly mawkish that they almost seem like spoofs but it turns out that we are supposed to take them seriously after all.) Another problem is that her character is abrasive without being especially interesting that it becomes a struggle to maintain any interest in her personal journey. Scrambled does have a few good moments here and there and is clearly a labor of love for McKendrick (who is currently working on the screenplays for a Grease prequel and a reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer) but in the end, it is a miss of a film that most viewers will labor to even like, let alone love.