By George & Josh Bate
Everyone wants to think that, when they help or offer support to loved ones, it comes from a deeply selfish, even altruistic, place. But what happens when the steps we take to care for one loved one has a detrimental consequence in the life of another loved one. This dilemma is at the heart of The Spiral, a sprawling and meticulously crafted fusion of family drama and Faustian bargain horror that makes for one of the year’s most unsettling films.
Making its U.S. premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Spiral begins in present day Italy as Anna (Jasmine Trinca), the mother of young woman Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano) ominously arrives on her doorstep after a period of estrangement. Alice’s mother informs her daughter that she has been lied to about her family history and proceeds to chronicle all the insidious secrets of her upbringing.
Divided into four chapters, director Paolo Strippoli begins his filming on a dark and stormy day marked by foreboding weather that suggests a harrowing story is to come. The Italian filmmaker more than lives up to the promise of this initial set-up by crafting a movie that disturbingly chronicles the systematic destruction of a family from the inside out.
The intricately engineered screenplay dials the clock back to 1999, where things start on eerily wholesome footing. Young Alice loves her older brother Tobia, who appears to have a promising football career ahead of him. Parents Anna and Walter (Adriano Giannini) adore one another and have recently launched a successful business that has allowed them to purchase their dream home. Everything is great for the quaint Italian family, perhaps a little too great.
When sudden tragedy strikes, Anna is given a tantalizing proposition by a mysterious woman. The Devil’s Advocate, Pumpkinhead, and Angel Heart are just a few horror films that centered around the consequences of a fateful Faustian bargain, but The Spiral takes a decidedly more intimate and disconcerting approach to this tried-and-tested concept.
The nature of the bargain itself plays the groundwork for the structure of the film, which, while threatening to be repetitive, ultimately affords the story with an engrossing, dread-soaked narrative framework.
Strippoli’s film is seldom terrifying in a manner fans of horror spectacles may expect. There’s no jump scares, no scary creatures, and no apocalyptic hellscapes, yet The Spiral nonetheless finds a way to burrow itself under your skin in a way few horror films come close to achieving.
Disguising a tragic portrayal of living under a narcissistic, self-absorbed behind the guise of a supernatural horror movie proves to be a stroke of genius from Strippoli. Through the perspective of Alice in the present day, Strippoli posits whether the series of tragedies that strike the family are a result of a deal with the Devil gone wrong or if they are over-extrapolations of an egocentric matriarch who struggles to separate herself from others’ stories.
Rather than avoiding answering this question, Strippoli clears up any lingering ambiguity with an intense, hair-raising finale. The entirety of the preceding film is inundated with suspenseful and breathtaking (literally, you’ll be holding your breath) moments, and Strippoli ensures that his winding family odyssey doesn’t run out of steam before the finish line.
The Spiral bolsters impressive performances across the board. Jasmine Trinca conveys Anna’s simultaneous holding of happiness at the state of her family life and dread at what may come from her deal with the Devil with incredible nuance and emotional weight. Andrea Genovese and Alessandro Carbonara excel in particularly gut-wrenching turns as Tobia at different stages of his life. And, in a truly chilling scene-stealing performance, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi captivates and unsettles as the mysterious woman proposing the Faustian bargains.
VERDICT: 8.5/10
Making its U.S. premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Spiral is a sprawling and meticulously crafted fusion of family drama and Faustian bargain horror that makes for one of the year’s most unsettling films. Beginning in present-day Italy, the film chronicles a family’s insidious secrets and the systematic destruction of a family from the inside out. When sudden tragedy strikes, Anna is given a tantalizing proposition by a mysterious woman, leading to a fateful Faustian bargain that provides the groundwork for an engrossing, dread-soaked narrative. Though seldom terrifying in a traditional horror sense, with no jump scares, scary creatures, or apocalyptic hellscapes, The Spiral finds a way to burrow itself under your skin through its tragic portrayal of living under a narcissistic, self-absorbed matriarch. Paolo Strippoli ultimately clears up the film’s lingering ambiguity with an intense, hair-raising finale, while impressive performances across the board—particularly Jasmine Trinca, Andrea Genovese, Alessandro Carbonara, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi—give the film incredible nuance, emotional weight, and a truly chilling atmosphere. Equally effective in its steady cultivation of dread as it is stirring up disconcerting emotions about nostalgia and family dynamics, The Spiral burrows under your skin and stays there long after its hair-raising finale, leaving behind an unsettling reminder that sometimes the most frightening horrors are the ones we inflict on the people we love.