Phenomena

Phenomena (1985) is an Italian horror film from Dario Argento you can watch online on iFILM — strange, operatic, and completely committed to its own rules. A teenage girl enrolled at a prestigious Swiss boarding school has an ability to communicate with insects; there is also a killer working through the surrounding mountains, and the two facts are connected in ways that require a Scottish entomologist and his chimpanzee to untangle.

Jennifer Connelly plays Jennifer Corvino in one of her earliest film roles, and she brings a genuine otherworldliness to a part that a less committed performer would have made unintentionally funny. Donald Pleasence as Professor McGregor gives the insect-forensics plot enough credibility to hold. Daria Nicolodi and Argento regular Fiore Argento fill out a cast that the director deploys as pieces in a nightmare he is arranging rather than explaining.

Goblin composed parts of the score; Iron Maiden and Motörhead appear on the soundtrack alongside them. The combination shouldn't work and yet it does. Phenomena sits at the peak of Italian giallo's most delirious period, and for anyone tracing the ancestry of elevated horror, it belongs on the list. Stream Phenomena (1985) online on iFILM.