Veneciafrenia

Veneciafrenia works better when it leans into the slasher with the beautiful Venice and its costumes as backdrop, but falls hard when it tries to focus on the main conspiranoic plot of the film, becoming something completely different and far less interesting.

I was fan of Alex De La iglesia since I was a kid, my favorites movies so far are "Perdita Durango" "El Día de la Bestia" and "Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi" all of them was fresh, and fun. Today: is a big letdown. The reason I watched the entire movie is because the locations and the costumes. I was intrigue about a slasher movie in Venice (sounds very exotic).

The characters are CHILDLISH and ANNOYING. The script is so poor that I was getting dizzy. Skip it at all cost.

Veneciafrenia (or Venicephrenia for the English title) might not be director Álex de la Iglesia's best but it is certainly worth a watch. I read from some other reviewers that they thought the acting wasn't good but I can't agree with that. I thought all the actors from this movies did a more than decent job. I had my portion of bad acting with the thousands of movies I watched but this was not the case with this one. That said the story is entertaining to follow, with a creepy Rigoletto as the villain. It made me laugh that the Spanish were the victims of the people protesting about mass tourism as they start doing it themselves in Spain. Countries like Spain need tourists so you can protest all you want but in the end you will regret it big time if tourists didn't come anymore. I get it that mass tourism can be annoying, I live in Andalucia myself, but let's not forget that without the billions they make of tourists Spain would just go bankrupt. Veneciafrenia, I get it that it's not the best horror movie ever but the slashing scenes were well done, the story was entertaining, and the acting professional so the negative reviews are not deserved.

Thoroughly enjoyable, fun and very dark film.

The film follows a bunch of young tourists from spain as they venture in the magic and mysterious streets of Venice.

The film will have you laughing quite a few times but also it'll have you rooting for the main characters, who will become very human and close to your heart.

The photography and production design is superb as well as its original soundtrack.

Cosimo Fusco, the main antagonist plays two different characters and it's just delicious.

This is a great film that seems half role play game and half slasher. Contains elements of classic Italian and Spanish horror films.

Date to watch it, I promise it won't bore you at all.

The Spanish director is very critical this time and he is fundamentally right: Venice, this jewel, has become an amusement park; it is the tragedy of mass tourism that is being targeted. Hence the idea of making Veneciafrenia, a slasher, this subgenre of horror in which the murderer, generally with well-founded reasons for having become one (or, at least, with some defense for his revenge), kills by the most savage methods young people who only think about having fun, fornicating, drinking and taking drugs, without looking for a moment at the environment in which they live or at the people or things that surround them. A slasher which, as the genre dictates, has the main aim of entertaining.

However, the film only half succeeds. The contrast between the classic Venice of the carnival, baroque, colorful and disproportionately brilliant, and the vulgar attitude of this gang of thirty-something Spaniards, three women and two men with youthful pretensions and adolescent stupidities, who stumble upon the worst journey of their lives, is too strong for us to believe it. Giallo's notes in the treatment of colors and the nuances of certain characters, confer a certain welcome ghostly vision to the whole with the obvious reference to the great "Don't turn around" by "Nicolas Roeg" from 1973, as a model to follow to present not a beautiful, sublime city, but a city that is frightening, because it is old, ugly and decadent.

"Veneciafrenia" ends up failing on both fronts: that of the rejoicing of terror, and that of the critical vision of the fact of society which was nevertheless an excellent starting point. This does not prevent some beautiful flashes like the opening credits, truly magnificent. The terror based on Opera with the excuse of the character of Rigoletto was also seen well. The black humor works at times but is poorly balanced with the terror of the Giallo. All of this lacks relevance and ambiguity: the general tone is strange due to the different parts that never really stick together (between the half-funny gore slasher and the satire-criticism with a certain message) and a disappointing ending.

It's well filmed, we recognize the touch of "De la Iglesia", but the film lacks a little this frenzy which, ironically, sometimes blurs certain works of this author. The protagonists are walking clichés. The villains much more interesting.

Barely an amusing film where we feel that "Veneciafrenia" is missing out on something that could have been memorable.