Weekly visions - week 24, 2026

Saw VI, directed by Kevin Greutert, written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, US, 2009 - ⭐⭐⭐

I mentioned last week that a trap in Saw V reminded me of the pound of flesh from The Merchant of Venice, and here it is, this chapter opens with a trap based on exactly that concept, to literarily punish - sorry, offer a new chance at life for - two unscrupulous money lenders. Final proof that behind the expressionless face of the new Jigsaw hides an avid reader.
Saw VI tackles corporate greed and the social issue of health insurance, and this finally gives some kind of sense or motivation to a sequel (although, one of the characters is punished because he didn’t quit smoking: a bit too harsh if you ask me).
The final twist is actually satisfying, and there are some memorable sequences (the carousel trap, for instance).
Plus, this may be the first Saw where we spend some time with the victims before they wake up trapped in a basement somewhere.

All in all, this is a (maybe, the) good sequel post-Saw III.
The forward plot is, once again, the investigation to identify the new Jigsaw, but, this time, it turns out almost thrilling, with some twists and turns in itself.
The flashback part, once again, rewrites the past in multiple ways, beyond any chance of believability, but Shawnee Smith returns and I enjoyed the absurdity of it all. At this point there seem to be more John Kramer acolytes than police officers in this town. Yet at the same time, nobody really seems to believe in his philosophy.
I feel a bit sad for Jigsaw, so self-celebrating when nobody understands him.

September 5, directed by Tim Fehlbaum, co-written with Moritz Binder and Alex David, Germany/US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐

I missed this film in theatres, but maybe it was a good thing: the accents here are all over the place (including for the American characters) and the background is often noisy, so I had to turn the subtitles on right at the beginning.
I expected to like this film more.
I appreciated the fact that it never leaves the ABC premises to show the events happening at the Olympic village, turning the well-known historical facts into an unclear situation where nobody is really sure of what’s going on. It brought me back to the fear and shock of 09/11.
But the most interesting promise of the trailer, the risk that the journalists’ work might help the terrorists, and the professional/personal conflict that should arise, is solved quite soon and quite quickly, culminating in a ridiculous scene where the German police orders ABC to stop broadcasting, and all it takes for them to retreat is being shouted at by Peter Sarsgaard.
Was Germany really so insecure and scared of itself in 1972?
The film won Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress and five more awards at the 2025 Deutscher Filmpreis, so maybe it really was.

Windfall, directed by Charlie McDowell, co-written with Justin Lader, Andrew Kevin Walker and Jason Segel, US, 2022 - ⭐⭐

In the last year of high school, Italian students learn about a number of Italian writers of the 20th century, and few of them leave teenagers as indifferent as Italo Svevo, a friend of James Joyce whose novels showcase inept men, adults who can’t take decisions and live their life in mediocrity, often lying to themselves about their motivations.
I suspect his books hit much differently for middle-aged readers, but I digress.

My point is that I didn’t give a second thought to Italo Svevo in thirty years, until I watched this film, where the protagonist (Jason Segel) is indeed a man who doesn’t seem to know what he wants: he breaks into a billionaire’s property, but then he doesn’t know what to do, and when he’s caught by the owner and his wife, he doesn’t know how to deal with them. Things happen to him rather than because of him.
Opposite him, the tech mogul (Jesse Plemons), brimming with alpha-ness and quick decisions.
Can you imagine a film where you root for the selfish, arrogant rich guy rather than the supposedly principled common man?
Well, here it is.
I have to assume that that is the point the film wants to make, but, if so, it’s a rather uninteresting way of doing it.
Or should we root for the wife (Lily Collins, also the director’s spouse), enjoying a wealthy life but, it seems, regretting her marriage?
Everybody in this story is annoying, and not much happens, unless for contrived reasons.

Still, this film has been co-written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the screenwriter of Se7en.
Director McDowell, son of Malcolm and Mary Steenburgen, is also (with co-writer Justin Lader) the author of The One I Love, a film I constantly forget I have already watched.

Profondo Rosso / Deep Red, directed by Dario Argento, co-written with Bernardino Zapponi, Italy, 1975 - ⭐⭐⭐½ (down from ⭐⭐⭐⭐)

When I was little, an older kid in my neighbourhood used to boast that he had watched Profondo Rosso, and survived. It was the eighties, and in Italy the admiration for Dario Argento flowed freely. I watched it for the first time five years ago, and some of that hype must have been still present in my subconscious.
This second watch was triggered by Chuck Jordan’s review, and their footnotes mentioning it about a likely inspiration for some of the Saw aesthetics.
Since I had survived it already once, and it didn’t exactly trouble my sleep, I could experience the film with more objective eyes, finding it more in line with my impression of other Argento films: stylish, but superficial, ineffective at creating a haunting atmosphere (at least, fifty years after the fact: maybe the effect back then was stronger).
There are unsettling scenes, both very explicit - like the mechanical puppet one (that has no relation with anything else) - and very subtle - such as the Blue Bar out of Nighthawks, where nobody really moves. But the story is very thin, and the investigation is just a pretext.

Forget David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Glauco Mauri and Gabriele Lavia: the real reasons to watch the film are the amazing art nouveau villa, and the soundtrack by Goblin, heavily inspired by Tubular Bells, but with a warmer prog-rock sound.
And the unsettling child song, that will resonate in your head for days.
This was the last film for Clara Calamai, a historic figure in Italian cinema, here playing Carlo’s mother with strong Baby Jane vibes.
The creepy child, Nicoletta Elmi, features in several giallos from the period, but was better known in my generation for playing the goth girl (back then we used to call them ‘dark’) in a high-school-set sit-com from the mid-Eighties, which all teenagers used to love at the time (but I suspect was actually pretty terrible).
Some animal cruelty, no doubt real, is quite upsetting. Unless that is one of the effects created by Carlo Rambaldi, who later went on to win three Oscars and design the Alien xenomorph and E.T.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, written and directed by Osgood Perkins, Canada/US, 2016 - ⭐⭐⭐½

I rewatched this film in a few sittings, as a mind cleanser to put me in an oneiric state before going to bed. Every time I see it, I feel like I appreciate it a bit more (but finally my rating hasn’t changed). Did I ever notice the upside-down chair?
I really loved the ectoplasmic appearances.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel this was the right role for Ruth Wilson: nothing wrong in her performance, it’s probably just that I am used to seeing her in parts with a different energy.

Non si sevizia un paperino / Don’t Torture a Duckling, directed by Lucio Fulci, co-written with Roberto Gianviti and Gianfranco Clerici, Italy, 1972 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’m not sure, but I think I watched Profondo Rosso in English. With Hemmings in the lead, it seemed natural that - even with recognisable Italian actors’ faces - everyone spoke English. But that film is set in Rome and filmed in Turin: big cities where it wouldn’t be unusual to hear a language other than Italian spoken.
Lips are pronouncing English words in this film too (although many of the adult actors here are not Italian, Thomas Milian, Barbara Bouchet, Florinda Bolkan had all been around Cinecittà for some time, and presumably could speak the language to a degree), but, set as it is in a remote village of Southern Italy, it felt just too unnatural to me to watch it in that language: I waited until I could find an Italian-dubbed version.

This was my first Fulci and, judging by his fame and the title, I was expecting a much more brutal film: instead, I was positively surprised by its restraint - probably because of the topic it deals with -, and even the nude scene with Barbara Bouchet is quite sweet.
I think it captures well, almost to a folk horror level, life in a small rural centre, precariously balanced between superstition and religion, the need to find a culprit for terrible events, and the eagerness to accuse someone who’s ‘different’.

The scene in the cemetery, soundtracked by the Ornella Vanoni song, is striking.

For non-Italians, ‘paperino’, beyond translating to ‘duckling’, is also the Italian name for Donald Duck, making the film title only slightly less confusing.