SHADOW

David is a veteran of the Iraq war determined to shake off the experience he has just lived through with direct contact with nature, so he goes to the forests of the Italian-Swiss border for mountain bike excursions. Arrived at the place and intent on exploring the Shadow Pass, famous for the eerie legends that hover over it, David comes up against two local hunters who are harassing a girl. Pursued by the two troublemakers, David and Angeline arrive at Shadow where the threat of the two hunters suddenly becomes the least of their worries, as someone much more dangerous lurks among the trees. "Come, there is a road in the forest, I know its name, do you want to know it too..." sang Gino Bechi in 1943 in "La strada nel bosco", the same song that Federico Zampaglione decided to include in two of the most representative scenes of his "Shadow". But the second feature film by the leader of Tiromancino does not speak of love and hope, but of horror and torture, so, according to the rule of music/image discrepancy, Bechi's melody is a choice as unusual as it is appropriate to accompany the protagonist's desperate flight into the woods and to serve as background to the mad daily life of the bogeyman of the moment. Music is central in "Shadow" and could not be otherwise given the sector of origin of the author, who in this film also signs the suggestive soundtrack – along with the group he himself founded, the Alvarius – which echoes vaguely 1980s electric tones. But music is only a starting point to talk about "Shadow", a precious horror that stands out in the sea of small products, often mediocre, that Italy has managed to produce in recent years. Zampaglione crafts a product that, for once, has an international scope, that speaks as much Italian – the tributes to the local tradition are present and evident – as mainly European. There are no lacking elements taken from the classics "Un tranquillo weekend di paura" and "Non aprite quella porta", but "Shadow" can be compared with greater pertinence to the current French and English horror new wave, that type of raw and experimental, realistic and innovative cinema, damnably fascinating although it tells nothing really new. Zampaglione, in his second attempt behind the camera after the mediocre grotesque comedy "Nero Bifamiliare", demonstrates not only a great genre film culture and an authentic passion, but also technical mastery of the medium, since the film contains a series of stylistic choices very appreciated, starting with the hectic chase scenes in the forest and especially for the way of shooting the 'monster' in its strange and disturbing perverse daily life. Thematically, "Shadow" decides to take a double path that on the one hand leads to the psychological drama with warlike tones, from which to draw the key to reading the entire story, on the other hand it approaches the more classic survival horror contaminated by the more modern torture porn suggestions. However, we are not faced with violence for violence's sake that is often the foundation of so many contemporary torture films, the terrible actions of Mortis that culminate in a couple of really gruesome tortures have a very specific function in the story and, on one occasion in particular, want to connect to the cruelty of war, the tortures inflicted on prisoners, the absurdity of past (and present) totalitarian policies. Excellent work is also done by the cast, a handful of actors perfectly cast in their roles, from the protagonist Jake Muxworthy ("Borderland – Linea di confine"; "Asylum") to the co-star Karina Testa ("Frontiers – Ai confini dell'inferno"), good also the two bastardly hunters, played by the character actors Ottaviano Blitch ("Italians"; "In the Market") and Chris Coppola ("Undead or Alive"; "Far Cry"). But above all dominates the performance of the almost debutant Nuot Arquint, an actor with a truly unsettling physique who bets everything on the expressiveness of his skeletal face and hairless body, since his character is not entrusted with any line of dialogue. A new bogeyman who will surely be remembered for a long time in the spectator's mind. "Shadow" represents a breath of fresh air for our genre cinema, unfortunately doomed to gasp in a stagnant atmosphere for far too many years. Probably it will not be that "rebirth of Italian horror cinema" that someone has advertised/risked, since a single film would hardly have the power to revive a genre, but it is nevertheless an excellent start, a really valid product and worthy of representing us abroad.