‘Thou shalt not…’
Death of the Virgin is a 2009 horror thriller film centred on murders and dark deeds committed in an Italian town with deep Catholic and artistic roots.
Directed by Joseph Tito from a screenplay co-written with Silvio Oddi.
The Canadian-Italian Jeo Productions movie stars Natasha Allen, Jennifer Healy, Maria Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Grace Pieniazek, Daniel Baldoch, Ingrid Evans, Silvio Oddi and Maurizio Vacca.
Plot:
In 1432 an apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared in the sleepy town of Caravaggio, inspiring the gruesome yet extraordinary religious paintings of the artist, Michelangelo Merisi. He would take on the name of the town as his own and go down in history as the hard-living and possibly blasphemous painter Caravaggio.
Now, in the modern era, three women travel to Caravaggio — Lisa (Jennifer Healy), an aspiring art student; Claudia (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), a sexy Italian translator and May (Natasha Allen), a young woman with a troubled past, about to enter the convent. Poor May becomes plagued by premonitions of shocking murders. Who will survive the terror of the supernatural, as murders based on Carvaggio paintings come true, and occult secrets unlock a shocking destiny…
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Review:
A middling Satanism thriller, director Joseph Tito’s Death of the Virgin sort of falls between the pews, Ostensibly it is occult-horror festooned with digital-camera tricks, ghostly entities and shock cuts that have made the Ring, The Conjuring and Insidious franchises popular horror hits. But there is also a debt to the Catholic-infused splatter-murder stuff associated with Italian blood maestros such as Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi – only not quite as hypnotically stylish and fevered. Some parts are downright draggy.
There is an advantage to making the setting the (real life) Italian town of Caravaggio, famed for association with the Renaissance religious painter of the same name, and for an alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1423. Church bureaucracy being what it is, one can only assume Mary did not have a proper foreshadowing of what horror movie makers in later centuries might do with her visitation.
Here in the present, a dance troupe stages an avant-garde piece inspired by brush-strokes of Caravaggio, especially his controversial painting “The Death of the Virgin” (for which Caravaggio allegedly posed a drowned prostitute as his model for Mary). But the female lead dancer of the piece disappears. More crimes and deaths ensue, seemingly inspired by Caravaggio’s imagery. An international bunch of visitors lured by the shrine and the dance show are staying at a creepy inn, supplying victims and red herrings
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Most pertinent of these to the rather confused storyline resolves to be May, a winsome Canadian who has been studying to become a nun. Her background includes a mother who died possibly possessed in hellish mental institution circumstances. Now May has visions of sickening dismemberment-slayings, interludes that invariably end with the terrified girl bolting upright in bed. This was-it-all-just-a-nightmare? bit gets repeated so much it soon becomes comical, though the finale offers a sort of explanation.
Violence includes decapitations, skull bashing, big hooks through faces, and tongue amputation. Small mercy that much of this happens in ill-lit murk. For hardened fright-film fanciers, some of Death of the Virgin works well, while other viewers. might wonder what power of Lucifer makes 104 minutes feel like an eternity. Though repressed Catholic lust and guilt are part of the stained-glass picture here, the sex and nudity quotient is on the low side, So, thank, uh, heavens for that.
Let’s be honest. By the mild trick ending, you cannot even tell positively who came out triumphant in this one, good or evil. But overall creepiness will give sin-obsessed horror addicts another title to cross off their hymnal list after they see it.
Charles Cassady Jr, MOVIES & MANIA
Trailer:
