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.
