This ones going to be a short one sadly, just simply because I dont have a whole lot to say about this one. it’s a bad movie. It’s not terrible., it’s competent. but it’s trying harder than it needs to to impress the audience with a “Look how clever I am” attitude. And it completely fails to capitalise on exactly why Giallo cinema is as enjoyable as it can be when in the right hands.

Giallo is all about suspense, all about tension. its about creating the illusion of peril on an almost constant basis. Movies like “Deep Red” or “Tenebre” thrive on being able to create an almost “Slow cooker” esq build of terror and thrills (And it looks damn fine while doing it) that reward the audience in spades. I dont often get surprised by the reveal in Giallo movies. But I appreciate the journey all the same.

Francesca by contrast isnt a slow building, bubbling pot of intreague. it’s a fairly tepid affair that im sure comes from a place of love to the genre but just comes across as a poor photocopy.

It’s a type of film that I catagorize as “Nice video, Shame about the song” (Made famous by the cast of “Not the nine oclock news”) its the idea that the film looks pretty (Which this one sort of does) but that it says nothing, has a poor script or is just flat out badly written. Francesca may have some fantastic advertising designs and some nice cine but its not worth a damn if the plots rubbish to begin with.

I also feel the need to somewhat apologise for this review as theres a glaring error towards the end where I forgot to drop the backing track at a couple of places and I also forgot to add in the “Where to skip to” point in order to avoid spoilers. I only noticed this well after the fact and short of re-uploading and losing all the views and comments associated with the video there wasnt a lot that could have been done. So my sincerest apologies and I hope it doesnt detrimentally effect your viewing experience.

(The “Twist” at the end of this film had me reaching for the Tylonol…bloody rubbish!)