The setup for this documentary about Italian director Dario Argento, one of the most legendary filmmakers to ever work in the horror genre, is undeniably compelling. The structure introduced by Simone Scafidi (who previously helmed a similar biography on director Lucio Fulci in the form of Fulci for fake) is that Argento has been set up in an isolated countryside hotel to work on his latest screenplay. Though he has often chosen hotels in order to focus on his creativity and avoid distraction, the key difference in Dario Argento: Panico is that he will be accompanied by Scafidi’s film crew to speak to him about his life and career.
To this end, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that any potential insight into how the man responsible for introducing the “giallo” subgenre to international cinema goes about his writing process ends up falling short. We never actually see Argento doing any writing. We never learn anything about his current project (it could be his 2022 film Dark Glasses, hailed as something of a return to form, but the timeline is fuzzy). The entire framing device is largely left in the background, and when we see Argento turn in a supposedly completed script near the end of the doc, it feels almost like an afterthought. Indeed, outside of a few scattered shots featuring Argento and a few other interview subjects walking through hallways and gardens, there’s little else to distinguish this from your standard “talking heads”-style career documentary.
Now for the good news: the career documentary that we get isn’t half-bad. Scafidi clearly has a lot of love for Argento’s films and their influence, and has assembled a commendable array of family members and former collaborators to speak about his journey from up-and-coming screenwriter to the kind of horror maestro compared favorably to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. We learn about how his fascination with the female form came from his mother, former model and fashion photographer Elda Luxardo, and from watching her work with her subjects while supposedly doing his homework after school. We learn about his family-first relationship with his father, already famous producer Salvatore Argento, who backed a number of his son’s early directorial outings.
Argento himself is a willing interview subject, speaking eloquently about his early influences (among them Hitchcock and Sergio Leone, with whom he collaborated on the screenplay for Once Upon a Time in the West), as well as the distinction he makes between instilling feelings of fear and of panic in his audiences. The major milestones are all suitably represented, from his initially controversial debut The Girl with the Crystal Plumage which wound up putting him on the map, to cinematic high points like Deep Red, Opera, and Suspiria, to his collaborations with writer/actress Daria Nicolodi and composer Claudio Simonetti of Goblin fame.
At times, the doc seems interested in exploring the less-savory aspects of Argento’s life, such as in his frank discussions about suicidal ideation that would occur even when his career was going well, or in his increasingly complicated relationship with daughter Asia Argento, who acted in several of his films through the ‘90s before moving on to become a director herself. These darker moments are relatively fleeting, however, and longtime Argento fans may have to fill in some of the gaps in storytelling themselves. For the most part the film is mainly focused on exploring the director’s genius, his unique inspirations, and the legacy that his filmography has left behind. To this end, prolific modern filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Gaspar Noé, and Nicolas Winding Refn are on hand to lavish praise upon his work, as well as to provide context for where it sits in the overall history of cinema.
While it may fall short of the possibilities suggested by its enticing logline, Dario Argento: Panico remains a thoroughly watchable, if overly reverent documentary that should appeal to both diehard and casual Argento fans, as well as providing a decent education on how his work has left a mark on the horror genre worldwide. Even if it’s ultimately unwilling to push too hard against its legendary subject, it’s a breezy watch at just 98 minutes, and easy to recommend to anyone who would like to know more about the history of one of Italy’s most iconic filmmakers.
SCORE: ★★1/2
Dario Argento: Panico is now streaming exclusively on Shudder.
