"The Cat o' Nine Tails" is a vastly overrated film from director Dario Argento and a textbook case of how not to make a crime-thriller. The film starts slow and crawls to its eventual conclusion, only arriving there with nonsensical plot devices that make watching this film a tedious chore. The plot is flat as a pancake and the only time the storyline isn't dull is when it's absurd. Your eyes will be getting a workout with the number of eye-rolls they'll be doing.
One example of the film's poorly conceived narrative is when the protagonists are able to magically read the mind of a victim named Bianca. They figure out she knew who the killer was, and she wrote his name on a note, which she then hid in a secret compartment in a locket necklace. This plot point is just laughably absurd considering the protagonists had no absolutely no way of knowing this.
Of course, the locket was buried with Bianca, but the protagonists are so sure of their magical deduction that they decide to break into the crypt and open her casket to retrieve the locket. Upon getting the note, they don't even bother to read it! One of the protagonists sticks it in his pocket. Then in a painfully cliched turn of events, they are attacked, and the attacker somehow knows about the note and steals it. The drawn-out series of missed opportunities and underwhelming twists in this movie is an insult to the viewer's intelligence.
Even Argento himself disowned this film, saying it was the least favorite of his works, and it's not hard to see why. The movie lacks the elegance of storytelling, the thrill of suspense, and the intrigue of a well-crafted whodunit, leaving the audience disappointed and unsatisfied. "The Cat o' Nine Tails" is a cinematic blunder, a meandering mess that fails to evoke even passing interest. It's a jumble of half-baked plot devices, a boring narrative, and a frustrating lack of coherence.
I have to assume that anyone who rated this higher than me did not watch the movie and simply rated it based on seeing Argento's name in the credits.
One example of the film's poorly conceived narrative is when the protagonists are able to magically read the mind of a victim named Bianca. They figure out she knew who the killer was, and she wrote his name on a note, which she then hid in a secret compartment in a locket necklace. This plot point is just laughably absurd considering the protagonists had no absolutely no way of knowing this.
Of course, the locket was buried with Bianca, but the protagonists are so sure of their magical deduction that they decide to break into the crypt and open her casket to retrieve the locket. Upon getting the note, they don't even bother to read it! One of the protagonists sticks it in his pocket. Then in a painfully cliched turn of events, they are attacked, and the attacker somehow knows about the note and steals it. The drawn-out series of missed opportunities and underwhelming twists in this movie is an insult to the viewer's intelligence.
Even Argento himself disowned this film, saying it was the least favorite of his works, and it's not hard to see why. The movie lacks the elegance of storytelling, the thrill of suspense, and the intrigue of a well-crafted whodunit, leaving the audience disappointed and unsatisfied. "The Cat o' Nine Tails" is a cinematic blunder, a meandering mess that fails to evoke even passing interest. It's a jumble of half-baked plot devices, a boring narrative, and a frustrating lack of coherence.
I have to assume that anyone who rated this higher than me did not watch the movie and simply rated it based on seeing Argento's name in the credits.