Main cast: German Baudino (Lorenzo the Great), María Eugenia Rigón (Antonella), and Pablo Vilela (Fabrizio Bernardi)
Directors: Luciano and Nicolás Onetti
Abrakadabra has been out for a while but at the time of writing, it just made its official debut on YouTube just a few hours ago. I’m not sure whether it will stay up for perpetuity on the Watch Movies Now! channel, but if you are interested, do drop by and have a look in case it is.
This movie is a loving tribute to the giallo genre – those mostly Italian exploitation flicks of the 1960s and 1970s, full of women (usually naked) getting killed with graphic detail. Lots of fake blood being splashed around, typically, and sometimes supernatural elements are present too. The genre easily flits from horror to crime and back again. In this case of this one, though, the whole thing is quite a mess so who knows whether Satan is really involved, despite mentions of a cult in this movie.
Our protagonist is the smarmy magician who dubs himself Lorenzo the Great. He witnessed his father – also a magician – die in a stunt gone awry while he was just a boy, a scene that serves to have me wonder whether his inner demon is causing him to kill people as an adult. That’s a typical giallo trope, after all. Indeed, a woman does die here, guillotined using Lorenzo’s own magic prop, and now he’s a prime suspect. He’s insistent that he’s innocent and he’s being framed. Is he?
This movie is full of giallo tropes from the mysterious femme fatale sort to the various twists and turns throughout the movie. Even Lorenzo himself is basically a walking compendium of tropes. The set, the colors used, even the cinematography are all part of a gorgeous, loving recreation of the atmosphere of those films, so in many ways, Abrakadabra can be considered a labor of love by giallo fans.
Unfortunately, the movie also operates on the assumption that a messy plot made even more opaque with haphazard chronology is also part of a giallo trope. Whether or not this is indeed the case, the result is still a befuddling mess that requires maybe a few viewings for the audience to come up with some interpretation of what they have just seen. More power to everyone involved in this movie if they thought this would make the film appear smarter, but what I have seen here doesn’t give me the impression that the movie is worth re-watching for future dissection.
At any rate, I suppose this movie may have some nostalgic appeal for fans of giallo movies. Conversely, people who don’t care for those films may find this one clunky and dated, even if the movie is deliberately made to be this way. Still, I personally don’t find anything here that wows me even a bit. I can take it or leave it.
