REVIEW: VENECIAFRENIA (2021)
By Elena Romea(*)
VENECIAFRENIA (2021) is the latest film by Alex de la Iglesia (THE DAY OF THE BEAST, COMMON WEALTH) and it is the first film by The Fear Collection label, an initiative said to give voice to genre directors to produce original feature films. It was also written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría responsible for many de la Iglesia’s scripts.
The movie was premiered at SITGES Film FEST last year. The main actors are unknown but Ingrid García-Jonsson (SWEET HOME). This is the first drawback we deal with. To tell you the truth the main characters, whose acting is far from good, are annoying and plain. They make no sense at all, and you really want them to be killed, instantly. The funny thing was seeing Armando de Razza —Cavan from The Day of the Beast— playing the detective and Cosimo Fusco— a legendary actor for detective and horror stories aficionados.
In the story, we are set in the iconic city of Venice, where inhabitants are sick and tired of tourism and the damage and inconveniences it causes to the city. That’s why a disturbing man emerges from nothing and takes his own vendetta. Even though many tourists are being killed or missing nobody seems to notice and only a group of friends start to worry when one of them disappears in strange circumstances. Can someone explain the importance or the purpose of including the police in the narrative? I mean, apart from being a kind of tribute to Gialli, making no sense as this flick is based on slasher codes…
So to speak, the flick pretends to be a hybrid between the Giallo and slasher, but its main intention is not clear at all. There is no mystery, thrilling or jigsaw to be guessed as in these, but just killing. As the movie goes on, you lost interest in what is happening next. Also, let me say that no random fury is seen, just kind of madness on the killer.
Besides, it does not seem like a work by de la Iglesia. It lacks all the sense of humor and the acid vision of traditions we can find in most of his works. He tried to be so serious and so naughty and at the same time, make a movie out of his Spanish portrait of life and I felt it had no sense at all. I may say that in some moments I thought I was watching TUNO NEGRO aka Black Serenade’s second part. From the time we get to the explanatory end we are so bored that we do not care about the killer’s background and motivation anymore. Also, this is an attempt of giving a poetic trace to a movie that since the very beginning has been nothing but a b-flick.
VENECIAFRENIA claims to be a plea against drunken tourism and gentrification following the latest slashers’ intentions of giving a social message such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022, but the mission, I am afraid to say, is not accomplished this time.
VENECIAFRENIA was in cinema theatres in Spain and now it is available on some VOD platforms.
__________________________________________________________
Elena Romea is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, and Horror Rises from Spain. A literature and cinema researcher, finishing her postgraduate studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books such as Fangoria or Hidden Horror. She has also been in charge of several translations.
