Review: Aenigma (1987), A Forgotten Gem from Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci’s reputation rests largely on the films he made during his gore-soaked run in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Zombie, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery dominate most discussions of his best work. By the time Aenigma arrived in 1987, critics seemed ready to dismiss it as a cheap collection of ideas taken from better films. It was panned for its derivative story, uneven acting, and strange logic. The criticisms are understandable. I just don’t agree that they make Aenigma (1987) a bad film.
In fact, I would put Aenigma among Fulci’s best works. Fulci reportedly called it one of his best films of recent years, and I’m inclined to agree with him. It may not be as technically accomplished as Don’t Torture a Duckling, but it is a pure expression of what makes Fulci so entertaining. It is lurid, atmospheric, and completely unreasonable. The story is often just a delivery system for images you’ll remember after the finer points of the plot have been forgotten.
The film opens at St. Mary’s, an all-girls college outside Boston, though almost nothing about it feels American. Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) is a lonely student who becomes the victim of a cruel prank organized by her classmates and Fred (Riccardo Acerbi), the school’s gym teacher. They convince Kathy that Fred wants to date her, then surround and humiliate her when she tries to seduce him. She runs into the road, gets hit by a car, and falls into a coma.
Soon afterward, a new student named Eva (Lara Naszinsky) arrives and moves into Kathy’s old room. It gradually becomes clear that Kathy’s consciousness has entered Eva’s body. From her hospital bed, Kathy uses Eva and an increasingly vague collection of telekinetic powers to punish everyone who took part in the prank.
The premise owes an obvious debt to Carrie (1976), with a little Suspiria (1977), Patrick (1978), and Phenomena (1985) in the mix. Fulci makes no effort to hide these influences. But Italian horror has always been cannibalistic. Filmmakers borrowed plots and visual styles from one another, something that applies to the greater horror genre, Italian or not.
Fulci turns this familiar revenge story into a string of bizarre death scenes, which is exactly where Aenigma comes alive. Fred is attacked by his own reflection. A stone statue crushes one of the students. Another girl is driven mad by visions of her boyfriend’s severed head, while the boyfriend himself meets an absurdly literal end involving a window. The connective tissue between these moments is thin, but the deaths are still the main attraction.
This follows a long tradition in giallo and Italian horror, where the murder setpiece can become more important than the murder mystery. Viewers are not necessarily waiting to discover who the killer is. They are waiting to see what outrageous thing the filmmaker has imagined next. Logic takes a back seat to spectacle.
Nothing in Aenigma illustrates this better than the infamous death by snails. Virginia (Kathi Wise) wakes up to find snails crawling across her bed and naked body. There is no sensible reason she cannot stand up, brush them off, and run from the room. Instead, the snails multiply until they cover her, crawl across her face, and enter her mouth. She dies slowly, smothered by creatures that move like…snails. The absurdity alone makes it one of Fulci’s greatest death scenes.
The supernatural plot also gives the film a philosophical question beneath all the slime. Where, exactly, does Kathy exist? Her body remains in a hospital bed, dependent on machines, while her will moves through Eva and reaches into the physical world. Kathy is physically powerless, but her mind has become almost limitless. Telekinesis turns thought into action and resentment into material force.
This separation of mind and body also makes responsibility difficult to place. Eva commits the acts, at least in a physical sense, but Kathy supplies the will behind them. At times, Eva appears to be a vessel. At others, she seems to merge with Kathy so completely that there is no meaningful distinction between them. The film never establishes clear rules, which can be frustrating, but that uncertainty fits the title. Kathy and Eva form a single identity spread across two bodies: one immobilized and one dangerously free.
There is an uglier moral ambiguity at work, too. Kathy has been treated horribly, and the opening prank is cruel enough that her desire for revenge is easy to understand. Fulci briefly places our sympathy with the victim. Then the punishments become so extreme that sympathy starts to rot. Kathy doesn’t simply reclaim her dignity or expose the people who hurt her. She annihilates them, often with a theatrical cruelty that mirrors the humiliation she suffered. Her new power gives her the opportunity to become more sadistic than her tormentors.
The film’s weakest element is its romantic triangle involving Eva, Dr. Robert Anderson (Jared Martin), and Jenny (Ulli Reinthaler). Anderson’s willingness to become involved with students is presented with almost no concern, and his relationship with Eva feels rushed. The performances are uneven, the dubbing is awkward, and several characters behave as though common sense would interfere with Fulci’s schedule.
Still, these problems never ruined the film for me. Aenigma moves with enough confidence that its cheapness develops a peculiar charm. The college corridors, hospital rooms, and shadowy interiors create a sickly, displaced atmosphere. It is set near Boston but feels like a half-remembered European imitation of America. This confusion adds to the dream. Nothing is quite where it should be.
This is why I think mainstream critics have been too hard on Aenigma. It is easy to list everything it borrows and every moment that makes no sense. It is harder to explain why those flaws matter so little while you are watching. Fulci understood that horror does not always need airtight logic.
Aenigma is not Fulci’s most polished film, but it may be one of his most purely enjoyable. It combines supernatural revenge, boarding-school melodrama, giallo-style spectacle, and dream logic into a wonderfully strange 90 minutes. The result is messy, derivative, and occasionally stupid. It is also inventive, atmospheric, and impossible to confuse with the anonymous horror that filled video-store shelves in the late 1980s.
For fans willing to meet Fulci on his own terms, Aenigma is not a failed imitation of better horror films. It is a forgotten gem with enough personality to survive its flaws — and enough snails to make sure you never forget it.
Aenigma (1987) Movie Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
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