By John Corrado
A series of Faustian bargains underpin Italian director Paolo Strippoli’s confidently directed psychological horror movie The Spiral, which is designed to provoke uncomfortable and disturbing moral questions as well as squirms.
The film opens on Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano) in Rome, being paid a visit by her estranged mother Anna (Jasmine Trinca) in the middle of a storm. Anna has a story to tell her adult daughter, revealing the real meaning behind mysterious events in their family’s history.
From here, Strippoli’s film unfolds across several chapters, each focused on a different member of the family. It begins with a horrific incident involving Alice when she was young, and a chance encounter that Anna had with a stranger (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) in the hospital, who offers her the chance to make a dastardly deal.
Stripolli gets a lot of mileage out of this premise, playing out like a feature length Twilight Zone episode. It’s built around the classic moral dilemma of pressing a button to improve your own life knowing that someone else will have to die (think Richard Kelly’s underrated 2009 film The Box).
It’s a morality play, but one laced with sick, dark humour and a commanding visual style. The cinematography by Cristiano Di Nicola presents some captivating imagery, including one scene thrillingly capturing celebrations around the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which provides a key part of one of the chapters.
Trinca carries the film with her performance as a mother going through hell, with unsettling supporting work from Tedeschi as the stranger that she meets. The two share dark chemistry, and their scenes together are some of the film’s highlights. The film maybe runs a touch long at nearly two hours, and can be repetitive in places. But the episodic structure – coupled with the performances and visual style – keeps us intrigued to see how deep and dark The Spiral goes.
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