Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town rife with superstition and a distrust of outsiders.
Lucio Fulci's masterwork transcends his splatter reputation with a genuinely complex giallo whodunit that doubles as a savage critique of southern Italian superstition, Catholic repression, and mob violence. The plot is unusually layered for the genre, subverting audience expectations about who the killer might be while delivering real social commentary. Cinematography by Sergio D'Offizi is frequently stunning, making expressive use of the rugged Calabrian landscape and harsh sunlight to create an atmosphere of dread and isolation rarely matched in Italian genre cinema. The film is highly distinctive — no other giallo quite captures this particular collision of folklore, religious guilt, and modernity — earning strong novelty marks. Acting is solid but uneven across the ensemble. The ending, while thematically resonant and visually striking, feels somewhat abrupt in its resolution of the investigative thread.