Dario Argento's latest "Giallo" is definitely brutal and grim, but regretfully still not a genuine throwback to the old-fashioned years of the Giallo; a sub genre of horror that Argento pretty much co-founded as well. This is one of the first times in his career that Argento didn't write the original screenplay himself, but he easily could have, since the film is chock-full of his usual trademarks, including misogynist torture, macho cop characters and a killer character with a hideous appearance and sick persona. In the city of Turin, a hood-capped killer abducts pretty young girls in his taxi and takes them to his secret liar where he has an operating table and a wide selection of delightful torture devices. When the killer was just a baby, apparently his heroine-addicted prostitute of a mother dropped him off at a nunnery in a plastic bag. I suppose that causes something irreversible damage to the fragile mind of a young boy. He also has a liver disease that makes the color of his skin kind of yellow; hence the title. When he kidnaps the gorgeous young model Celine, her older sister Linda teams up with Inspector Enzo Avolfi, who's actually a pretty introvert and reasonably creepy individual himself. The plot of "Giallo" is ultra-thin and not nearly as imaginative as they used to be, with a truckload of red herrings and more twists than a French mountain road, but there are still multiple moments of gripping suspense. The violence, however, is following the trend of the nowadays torture porn flicks (like "Hostel" and "Saw") and just comes across as repulsive, gratuitous and uncompromising. The sniveling killer pulls teeth and carves up the girls' pretty faces like he's on the set of the umpteenth unnecessary torture porn flick instead of a Dario Argento Giallo homage. The murders in Gialli movies have always been sadistic and gruesome, but at least they were often presented in style. But enough complaints now, as "Giallo" undeniably still is a worthwhile film for Dario Argento fanatics like myself and many others. I'm sick and tired of reading stuff like how the legendary Italian director Dario Argento lost his magical touch and ought to retire! As far as I'm concerned, Argento is still the only one who delivered a genuine Giallo in the post-2000's (with "Sleepless") and his other efforts like "The Third Mother", "Do you like Hitchcock" and the two episodes in Masters of Horror are fantastic entertainment.
