BELPHEGOR, PHANTOM OF THE LOUVRE

In the Louvre Museum warehouses, a sarcophagus containing an Egyptian mummy thousands of years old is found. While some researchers try to understand who the mummified body belonged to and its exact origin, strange apparitions begin to manifest in the museum and inexplicable events occur. Someone or something has been awakened from its eternal sleep and the consequences will be dire... Given the chronic lack of ideas that pervades the horror genre, but not only, it was inevitable that someone would eventually have the idea of making a cinematic adaptation of the beautiful black-and-white TV series, with Juliette Gréco (who also appears in this new version, in a brief cameo inside the cemetery) who terrified and captivated many viewers at the end of the 1960s. Despite a discreet and always fascinating Sophie Marceau in the role of the protagonist, this "Belfagor" version two thousand turns out to be a totally failed operation. Suspended between the serious and the facetious (the director wanted to mix moments of suspense with "comic" moments, but the result was disastrous), poorly interpreted (with the exception of Marceau, as mentioned) the film drags slowly to the end, resulting irritating and boring at the same time. Fragmented, inconclusive, filled with useless and cumbersome characters (one for all the guardian passionate about Egyptology), with some dialogues on the verge of the absurd and special effects that mimic those seen in the two chapters of "The Mummy", "Belfagor - The Phantom of the Louvre" is one of the worst horrors to come out in recent years. The director was not even able to take full advantage of a fascinating and atmospheric setting like the Louvre (the production had in fact obtained permission to shoot the film inside the famous Parisian museum) relegating it to a simple background of the events narrated. In short, the advice can be one only: avoid it.