All Quiet on the Soavi Front?
While I love vintage Argento and dutifully watch the later films, the man clearly misses his original collaborators, crews and inspiration. Sadly, he seems to belong to an earlier time.
Michele Soavi, however, is at the top of his game. Unfortunately, he's so versatile that no one can point to one kind of film at which he excels and become a fan of the repetition. Ever since Cemetery Man and his return from the break he took to raise a family, every film and series he's directed has been different.
And because Soavi's films haven't been shown in U.S. theaters since Cemetery Man, no one ever hears about what he's doing. This is utterly, utterly wrong.
In fact, we should be talking about him right now. People should be posting on his film forums and promoting his newest films. He's clearly the best giallo director still working today.
We need to talk about him again. We need to encourage him to return to the horror film genre and continue to redefine it, as he did with Cemetery Man, which is probably the most structurally ingenious revision of Italian horror since Mario Bava and the only variation of it that has been truly new since the golden age.