Aenigma
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- Release Date: October 25, 1987
- Directed by: Lucio Fulci
- Written by: Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci
- Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes
Aenigma is one Lucio Fulci film that I had never heard of before I bought it. I got a copy when Severin Films released its Blu-Ray a few years ago, and it sat on my shelf for quite a while until I finally got around to watching it. On my first viewing, it really didn't hold my attention too well. It didn't have the same grimy feel that defined his best 80s horror films, and I remember drifting off a few times during its runtime. I gave it a rewatch for my 2025 Fulci Marathon, and was really surprised to find myself enjoying it a whole lot more the second time around. While it may not have as many iconic moments as something like The Beyond, there's still a lot of imagination here, and I think I'm starting to view this movie as a bit of a hidden gem!
The movie centers around a college in Boston where several girls pull a prank on a classmate, which results in her getting hit by a car. Now brain-dead and hooked up to various medical machines, the victim projects her consciousness / psychic will onto a new student arriving at the same college, and uses her as an anchor point to pick off the girls who bullied her one by one. On paper, the movie may seem a little derivative of things such as Carrie or Dario Argento's Phenomena, and while the premise isn't the most original thing in the world, it's easy to look past that shortcoming because of how entertaining and imaginative its death scenes are. While not as gratuitous or gross as the ones from the Gates of Hell films, they still sport some pretty gnarly imagery and ideas. The most iconic one is probably the one where a character is smothered to death by a swarm of snails, and while that may sound silly, your skin will be crawling when you see the actress covered from head to toe in real snails. The psychic can also bleed into the environment itself and cause mayhem, such as when she makes a man's reflection burst out of a mirror to strangle him, or make a statue come to life and crush a girl. The supernatural nature of this killer means that it barely has any rules, and that gives the movie some of the same surreal qualities that Fulci perfected in previous films. It feels like such a nice return to form after the dud of Manhattan Baby and the near-miss of Murder-Rock.
Along with the super imaginative death scenes, I really enjoy how this movie is shot in spots. There are a couple of scenes that feature the psychic's spirit traveling from her body, and to convey this, the movie uses a POV shot of the spirit flying from the hospital to the college. These shots make use of some miniature sets, and I think these may be the first miniatures that I've noticed in a Fulci horror film. In addition, many of the horror scenes take place at night, and these are lit with various shades of light blue or green. There is also a violent dream / sex scene that is shot with a vibrant shade of red. While not as saturated and stylized as Dario Argento's most famous works, they still give the movie a cool look that sets it apart from Fulci's earlier, grimier horror films. At certain times, with the odd coloring and surreal horror scenes, it really does remind me of Suspiria or Inferno, just without the hyper-saturation and prog rock soundtrack. It feels like he was beginning to branch out a little bit and finally make that metaphysical horror film that he wanted to after spending so much time in the gritty, gross-out side of horror.
I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed Aenigma on a rewatch. I went in expecting the really uneven experience that I remembered, and ended up with a very entertaining piece of 80s Italian horror cinema. It may not be one of the must-see greats, but there are a lot of highlights here that a fan of the genre would love. Sadly, this would be Lucio Fulci's final horror film that he made before he began to succumb to various illnesses. I wish that he had been able to make more films of this caliber during this time period, as it shows that he was starting to get his groove back after a couple of missteps. His filmmaking career wouldn't be the same after this movie, but if you look at it as a sort-of "last hurrah" to his prime era, it's really not a bad one to go out on.