P.O.E. : PROJECT OF EVIL

Seven short films directed by eight different directors aim to loosely adapt seven works by Edgar Allan Poe into images. The texts considered are, in order: The Pit and the Pendulum, Alone, Loss of Breath, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, and The Premature Burial. After the successful "P.O.E. – Poetry of Eerie," part of the production team reunites to give a sequel to the 2011 experiment, which aimed to form a collective of independent Italian directors to bring to life the works of the never-forgotten Edgar Allan Poe. Thus, already the following year, "P.O.E. – Project of Evil" was born, setting a different intention from its predecessor: while the previous film sought to highlight the poetic and macabre dimension of the author from Boston, this sequel aims to bring out a bloody and violent vein, more anchored to the horror imagination. But that's not all, because although definitely successful as a whole, the first "P.O.E." still had some rather macroscopic defects, given by a sometimes significant qualitative discrepancy between episode and episode and by an excessive overall length that made the viewing sometimes heavy. Instead, "Project of Evil," supervised by Angelo and Giuseppe Capasso for their APC Production, manages to correct the shot, the episodes are qualitatively more cohesive and fewer in number, reaching the canonical 90 minutes of total duration. But let's talk about the episodes that make up the film. Opening "P.O.E. – Project of Evil" is "The Pit and the Pendulum," directed by Donatello Della Pepa, already the author of the successful shorts "Moebius – Who's Knocking at My Door?" and "Versipellis." The distances taken from Poe's work are considerable, since here the subject is addressed in an original sci-fi/esoteric key: a man (Federico Giacinti) wakes up in a completely white room, he doesn't know where he is or why he is there. A chasm, a well, opens in the floor, while the noise of an invisible pendulum obsessively marks the time. After a while, the chasm widens. The man is the guinea pig of an experiment! The atmosphere is effectively disorienting, the interest in what we see on the screen is progressively high, and the creature that appears at the end is very well realized by Luigi D'Andrea. It's a shame only that the end of the short comes abruptly and unexpectedly, leaving us almost with a handful of nothing, because continuing to follow the "guinea pig" would have been really interesting. Anyway, a notable short. Next is "Alone," directed by Angelo and Giuseppe Capasso, already present in the first film with one of the best episodes. Based on a poem by Poe, this short completely transforms the original work to transpose the concept of loneliness into a b-movie dynamic that seems to recall certain revenge movies from the '80s, accompanied by a substantial dose of torture porn. We see a man (Angelo Campus) tied to a chair in a warehouse, psychologically and physically tortured by another man (Dario Biancone), who wants to take revenge for past wrongs and the woman he loved, stolen from him by his rival. Perhaps a few minutes less would have benefited the short, which, although traveling at rather good quality levels, is a bit too redundant in staging the verbal confrontation, sometimes excessively caricatured, between the two rivals. Really great the special effects that lead to high splatter consequences, a bit unfortunate the choice to put a wig on one of the two actors on stage. Intent on subverting the original story is also the third episode, "Loss of Breath," directed by Edo Tagliavini, already present in "Poetry of Eerie" and director of the feature film "Bloodline." Francesco (Francesco Malcom) is a declining hard actor trying to make a second career in the "normal" cinema world, but he has problems with the tax authorities, and the mafia boss Manero is after him for an unpleasant statement made about him. During a hard performance, Francesco runs out of breath, risking suffocation, and from that moment loses the use of his voice; immediately after, two henchmen of Manero show up at the actor's house to make him release a statement that clears him of the accusations made, otherwise they are ready to torture him… but Francesco can't speak! "Loss of Breath" is simply one of the most successful episodes in the batch, original in its staging and experimental language, Tagliavini's short uses a raw black and white (with some color flashes) and silent film (supported by title cards as in 1920s cinema) to underscore Francesco's state of normality, which turns into sound when the protagonist loses the use of his voice. "Loss of Breath" thus plays with cinema and its expressive languages, entrusting the leading role to a real former hard diva (the talented Francesco Malcom) and staging a series of extremely violent twists, tempered however by a constantly grotesque and over-the-top tone. Highly successful. The fourth episode is "Morgue Street" by Alberto Viavattene and offers a famous story by Poe featuring a killer monkey. Well, thinking about the killer monkey in an independent short film might raise some doubts, but Viavattene has signed one of the best episodes of the anthology, along with Tagliavini's. Perhaps the closest to Poe's work among those presented, "Morgue Street" introduces us to two prostitutes who, after saying goodbye to a client, are attacked by a "super-endowed" gorilla escaped from the circus. For the two, it will be moments of terror and agony. Viavattene crafts a disturbing short like few others (you can "boast" of being banned by the Australian censorship committee), attentive to visual and thematic shock, showing us a degraded environment, various morbidities, and a lot of violence, reaching the climax when the monkey rapes one of the two women, even making her perform oral sex. Notable is the staging that prefers a meticulously curated photography that abandons itself to bright and unreal colors, excellent the narrative twist that gives meaning to the presence of the monkey, and suggestive the long final fixed shot. Brave are also the two performers Désirée Giorgetti (already seen in "Morituris") and the more mature Federica Tommasi, known mainly for her career in hard. The only weak point is the look of the monkey, indeed. The negative note comes with the fifth episode, "The Tell-Tell Heart," directed by the Frenchman Nathan Nicholovitch, who crafts the shortest but also the worst short in the collection. The main problem of "The Tell-Tell Heart" is that it seems completely out of context: not only is it a dramatic story about a homeless gay man who goes through a process of isolation to become a trans (???), thus eluding the genre optics of the entire project, but it doesn't even try to touch on suggestions and themes typical of the work from which it improperly takes the title. The result is somewhat boring and hard to decipher, although the protagonist David D'Ingeo offers a very intense performance and the exotic locations, almost all outdoors, offer a touch of variety in the work as a whole. Rather weak is the sixth fragment, "The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether," directed by Domiziano Cristopharo (also in the first "P.O.E." and director – among others – of the feature "House of Flesh Mannequins") and based on one of the lesser-known stories of the American writer. In the film, Poe himself is the protagonist of a visit to a psychiatric hospital to document the legendary experimental treatment system of Doctor Tar and Professor Feather. With an elegant black and white, too many talks, and perhaps excessive length, we arrive at a final twist that is quite obvious from the beginning. The lead actor who portrays Edgar Allan Poe is the talented Dario Biancone, already appeared in the Capasso's episode, the rest of the cast is not very convincing. Visually and directorially noteworthy, but overall this short is not convincing. Closing the film is "The Premature Burial" by Giuliano Giacomelli ("La progenie del Diavolo"; "P.O.E. – Poetry of Eerie"), a rather original variation of the short story by Poe from which it takes its title. A man (Lucio Zannella) finds himself locked in a coffin. After the initial panic, he will do everything to dig himself a passage, not knowing what awaits him outside. The initial situation of "The Premature Burial" may recall the recent "Buried – Sepolto," but the tension is constant, and towards the end, the short takes an unexpected turn that recalls certain Italian cinema of the early '80s, both for the situation shown and for the suggestive musical theme composed by Enrico Angelini. Short and effective. "P.O.E. – Project of Evil," in conclusion, turns out to be a successful work and capable of improving some defects of its predecessor, showing more compactness and a better ratio between the number of episodes and quality. Obviously, there is always that sense of "assembly operation" that is felt a bit in all today's films composed of multiple episodes, but the result is highly satisfying. Winner of the Critics' Award at ToHorror 2012 and the first prize in the Italian feature films category at Fantafestival 2013.