A not-too-good Masters of Horror installment by not-too-good filmmaker Argento. I knew the ending three minutes in, and just waited patiently to be proven right. An insultingly crappy story, in which TV veteran Steven Weber (currently in that Studio 60 show) saves Jenifer (some girl with lotta makeup) from a crazy man who is trying to kill her. Kills the man, brings Jenifer HOME for some reason, wife and kids disapprove, Jenifer eats family pet and has amazing sex with Weber. Now Weber wants to keep her, so she keeps eating neighborhood people and dude’s family moves out and finally he moves out into the country and gets a simple stockboy job and all is well until Jenifer kills the store-owner’s son and now Weber tries to kill Jenifer but she’s SAVED by a hunter who kills our man and rescues her and so on.
Not all bad – the Jenifer character is disturbing enough with the crazy face and the eating people’s guts, but not too good either. Katy didn’t watch and wouldn’t have liked.
Saul Symonds in Light Sleeper points out all the ways this one fits in with Dario Argento’s other work: the circularity of plot, the duality of Jenifer’s character, the “strange shifts of direction”, and exploring “the manner in which a central protagonist is devoured by darkness”.