Aenigma - Movie Review

Aenigma is a 1987 effort by one of Italy’s best known horror directors, Lucio Fulci. In this grizzly tale of revenge and romance, in that order, the ugly duckling of St. Mary’s College – Kathy – has been set up by her fellow classmates into thinking that the fitness instructor Fred Vernon is attracted to her. Their entire evening is broadcast to Kathy’s classmates through a microphone Fred stashed in his car, and Kathy’s desperation for love and affection is overheard by the majority of her classmates who have been following the couple in their cars all night long. Finally, the joke is sprung on Kathy. She flees from the scene but the ruthless students chase her down in their cars. Kathy runs into a busy street and is hit by a truck. She winds up in a coma, and eventually goes brain dead but her voice carries on through the world.

Suddenly, one of St. Mary’s’ former students – Eva Gordon – returns from a sabbatical taken because of a nervous breakdown she had suffered, and there are no assumptions for the audience to make; Eva is shown to be possessed by Kathy, and one by one through mysterious powers Kathy through Eva begins seeking revenge on the individuals that wronged her causing her victims to experience horrifying hallucinations that become real and deadly. And somehow, Kathy’s mother – the university’s maid – has a hand in all of it.

Every time Kathy gains vengeance on someone, her brain dead body at the hospital begins to show signs of life, even healing. Then, Eva suffers an anxiety attack and the neurologist that is watching over Kathy – Dr. Robert Anderson – is called to the university to check on Eva. Kathy uses Eva to try getting the doctor to love her, but the doctor soon has eyes for the only person that showed Kathy any kindness, her roommate Jennifer. That does not sit well with the malicious, revenge-minded Kathy.

Lucio Fulci is a legend in Italian horror cinema. He was a suspenseful director, but his claim to fame was the detail in his killings with the gore he was willing to exploit for a movie. He had directed some giallo films, but he was always at his best with straight forward horror. In Aenigma, he is allowed to let his imagination run wild; there are deaths by smothering snails, animated statues, and even someone’s doppelganger. There are no computer effects in this movie, all of the fright scenes are genuinely handmade crafts, including some love-making cannibalism.

The rest of the movie is a bit harder to digest. The film supposedly takes place in Boston, Massachusetts but none of the actors look like they resided anywhere other than Central Europe for their entire lives, plus their English appears so physically broken it looks as though their dialogue had to be overdubbed by voice over artists in post-production. There are some plot-holes to deal with but the center piece of the story, Kathy’s longings to be loved by a man and to be accepted in her social scene are very clear. There is hardly any suspense in the movie and the story is hard to follow at times, but if you’re a fan of gore and disturbing images Aenigma and Lucio Fulci will not steer you wrong.