RADICE QUADRATA DI TRE

Three friends, classmates in a high school, are at risk of failing due to yet another failed math class test. On the advice of one of them, the three friends, in an attempt to secure their promotion, decide to sneak into their school at night and replace their failed tests with positive ones. The night arrives and the three boys, as agreed, stealthily enter the school building, but they will soon discover that, during the night, not everything in the school building is as one might imagine; in the basements of the institute, in fact, another dimension opens, an infernal dimension where macabre satanic rituals take place and populated by demonic presences. As we can all observe, the horror genre (that is, our favorite genre) can be considered a nearly extinct genre in our country; it has been years now that we have not been offered the opportunity to witness a good made-in-Italy horror film on the big screen. Now, we have to settle just for the appearances of the master of Italian horror, Dario Argento, a director who has been appreciated by fans of the genre (and others) for having made films that immediately became true cult classics, but who now, even he, seems to have run out of creative juice, gifting us only lackluster films on the verge of being watchable. Do we have to say goodbye to our beloved genre? Do we have to consider it a genre definitively dead in Italy? The answer is: No! In fact, there is a hidden world, an "underground" world, a world populated by independent directors who make self-produced films, films that benefit from an extremely limited budget but that, despite this, often still reach excellent levels. Of course, it is not a positive thing to know that "our" genre is now almost exclusively in the hands of independent directors who do not always manage to get known and make their works known to the public; but the important thing is that "our" genre continues to live in one way or another. This is the case of "Lidris cuadrade di tre" (in Italian "Radice quadrata di tre"), the debut work of an independent Friulian director, Lorenzo Bianchini, who, despite having almost non-existent means at his disposal, decided to revive the horror genre by making a more than dignified film and certainly superior to the average of high-budget films made in Italy in recent years. First of all, the idea behind the subject is good, namely making the house of evil a school, a simple high school, which, from an adult's point of view, may seem a harmless, even constructive, building, but from a student's point of view, has always aroused a sense of anxiety and terror (for various reasons). Around an attractive location, an intelligent, elaborate, and unsettling story is built, supported by a more than valid screenplay and convincing direction. As a horror film, it really works very well, as it manages to convey a sense of anxiety to the viewer in many situations and even to scare him in some points (remember the appearance of the boy who walks with hands sewn in place of feet and the suggestive scene of the sacrifice). The actors (all friends of director Bianchini) also do very well and manage to perfectly embody the characters they represent. The only dark side of the film, but it would have been almost impossible to ask for more from this point of view, is the photography: due to the use of digital, we are offered a "fantastic" glossy image, almost more suited to a soap opera than to a film; but still, it is admirable the choice of the director who, to somewhat remedy the situation, decided to offer scarce or reddish illuminations. Furthermore, it should be noted that being the first real film made in Friuli (before "Radice quadrata di tre" there was only a medium-length film always by Bianchini "I Dincj de Lune"), it was decided to make it using almost exclusively the Friulian dialect (hence the title "Lidris cuadrade di tre"), but logically with the addition of Italian subtitles. This will later become a distinctive feature of the director who will use the Friulian dialect for other of his subsequent works such as in the excellent film "Custodes Bestiae". In conclusion, this "Lidris cuadrade di tre" is a really well-made film and admirable especially if we consider the means (almost non-existent) that were available. It would be useless to submit an additional criticism to the obtuse and uncourageous Italian distributions that limit themselves to distributing films that always deal with the same subjects (logically far from the horror genre) and leave in the shadows great directors and great films like Lorenzo Bianchini and his "Lidris cuadrade di tre" which is almost impossible to find given that it never came out in video stores but only exists in a rare DVD edition printed by the "CEC" (Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche). A film that definitely deserves a viewing, especially if you are students and want to convince your parents not to send you to school tomorrow.