Review of Aenigma

Aenigma (1987)
4/10
If the snails crawled into her mouth, did they also crawl up her....?...
4 February 2006
...ehr, nevermind, I guess I'm a sick puppy. And it seems that I like tormenting myself too, 'cause last night a strange urge encouraged me to re-watch AENIGMA. I first saw it 6 years ago, or so, and thought it was rather bad. And now, 6 years later, guess what? It's still bad. From the moment the opening credits come on you know it can't be good: very bad 80's pop music and a girl that's putting make-up which makes her look even more ugly. Anyway, the story isn't exactly original: Ugly girl gets to be the victim of a prank by fellow-students and ends up in a coma. But her soul roams free, occasionally possessing the new girl in school and killing all the ones involved in the accident.

Welcome to the 80's world of college-cuties: smoking in dorm-rooms with Sylvester Stallone & Tom Cruise-posters on the wall. The acting's really bad all the time and the sound editing's rather sloppy too. But the directing isn't really too bad. There are a few nice camera-moves and two fine top-shots of the school and the hospital (which do look like miniatures, by the way, but still nice). Are there any more reasons to watch this flick? Well, ehr... maybe: the death-by-snails-scene (kinda gross), the museum-sequence, a decapitation, and... a bizarre sex-scene in a dream with our leading-girl biting chunks out of the love-doctor.

But there isn't much gore actually, considering Lucio Fulci made this. The movie itself never gets really boring due to the deaths and frequently intercut freaky shots of the creepy girl in a coma, but the ending seemed like they just (literally) pulled the plug on this movie. It really hurts me a lot to flunk a Fulci-movie, 'cause I'm a fan of some of his movies. Can't bring myself to give AENIGMA less than 4 stars though, because it still feels like a Fulci-movie. If you're only an average horror-fan, you should avoid this movie 'cause this is for Fulci-fans only.
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