Take one look at the trailer for Italian-directing duo Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli’s A Classic Horror Story and you’ll see influences from dozens of iconic horror films spanning decades, from The Wicker Man and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to more recent classics like Midsommar. On the face of it that sounds like a horror fan’s dream; a mash-up of all of the seminal works rolled into one gory, terrifying masterpiece. In actuality the resulting film is a mess of confused, overly pretentious commentary on modern phone culture and an examination of the horror genre that tries so hard to be witty and meta that it ends up criticising itself in the process, writing off the hour preceding the ham-fisted final act twist as little more than filler.
The set-up lives up to the name. The troubled Elisa (Matilda Lutz) boards a ride-share RV venturing across Italy with four strangers: reserved doctor Riccardo (Peppino Mazzotta), young couple Sofia (Yuliia Sobol) and Mark (Will Merrick) and their driver Fabrizio (Francesco Russo), a self-confessed horror movie fanatic. When their RV crashes in the middle of the night, the group wake to find themselves still in the vehicle but stranded in a clearing within a forest miles away from the nearest road. You probably think you know what’s going to happen next right? Trust us, you don’t.
You don’t name your film so boldly if you don’t mean it as some form of commentary but De Feo and Strippli’s film borrows so much from a litany of horror movies then combines them in a way that shares none of their individual strengths. Most of the inspiration is clearly drawn from Midsommar, from the design of the eerie house situated in the clearing to the chilling score and cult of demon worshipping villagers. The highlight of the comparisons come in the stunning visuals. Lush images of forests and mist-covered clearings fill the frame during the day, whilst a sinister red hue bathes the screen as the townspeople signal their approach in the dead of night. It doesn’t come near to having the level of symbolism as Ari Aster’s masterpiece but that isn’t the intention here. Adding in Hostel-level torture and gore and a final girl pulled from the likes of Ready or Not to the mix should result in one firecracker of a horror film but that just isn’t the case here.
For one thing, the film is entirely too meta for its own good, constantly dissecting horror tropes and grandstanding about how cliché and bad they are before diving headfirst into a slew of them. At one point a character declares his distaste for violence, stating he thought violence was cool as a teenager, “like in some bad movie”. That same character proceeds to have his leg snapped, his ankles hobbled and his eyes gouged out with rusty spikes. If this is meant to be a self-deprecating commentary on the film itself then why? It isn’t clever filmmaking to tell your audience something is stupid and then put your characters through exactly that without any acknowledgement that they’re in on the joke. And if the digs are at horror in general then why not try to further the genre through new techniques or story dynamics rather than by ragging on everyone else? It comes across as incredibly pretentious and that’s before we’ve even arrived at the big third act reveal that plunges the entire ordeal into utter stupidity.
I’ve harped on about the twist for so long because of the crippling effect it has on the film. The first hour is a slow burn, to say the least, as the group explore their surroundings, growing increasingly uneasy and aware that there is something sinister at work. Nothing much really happens to justify this feeling of tension other than the excellent score. No jump scares or loud noises, just a couple of odd scenes around the area that set suspicions high. Then everything hits the fan, both for our heroes and the story as a whole, once the true intentions of the villainous villagers are revealed. It isn’t the high-concept meta commentary that the film thinks it to be, seemingly poking fun at a generation obsessed with their phones and easily digestible short-form “content” rather than storytelling on a filmic level. The opposite effect is had: the preceding hour is rendered an ultimately pointless segue into a generic revenge plot, identical to any number of films from the sub-genre, leading to a dull, emotionless finale that feels devoid of any stakes.
On paper A Classic Horror Story sounded so promising. A chance to deconstruct and reinvent the genre while paying tribute and homaging those films that have paved the way. Instead what we get is a mean-spirited, pretentious mess that insists that other horror films are nothing but cliché and – by pointing that out constantly – it counts as a deep discussion of the genre. The notion of that on its face is stupid but is made all the worse when the film ends up devolving into the very cliche’s it is taking aim at, even after its incredibly stupid twist. A classic horror story this is not, just a really bad one.
A Classic Horror Story stars Matilda Lutz, Francesco Russo, Peppino Mazzotta, Yuliia Sobol & Will Merrick – Streaming on Netflix now.