The Vanity Serum (2004)

Blistering performances.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Blistering performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I'm a big Margherita Buy's fan and I can say that she perfectly fits her detective character, anyway everyone of the cast does his job very well (you can say that there are the best young Italian actors). The subject is absolutely topical and relevant: the television's world and what lies beneath that. As a matter of fact I think the script is the best thing of the movie, maybe because is based upon a nice novel by Niccolò Ammaniti, one of the most famous writer in Italy. I wrote this novel and you can say that the film has got the same intriguing and fascinating mood. I can't see how u can criticize a movie like this, maybe because sometimes here in Italy we're to hairsplitting, most of all with our own directors and movie.

Oh my god! After watching that much average stuff I cannot believe I found this DVD in their middle. It is absolutely another level. I just saw it and still feel this special crawling after a good horror film… Might be some kind of an underestimated director that wanted to show that he has got power, and he showed. It is sort of an awesome crime and mystery driven horror production. Also if the story is not always logical or explained, you get this fascinating feeling when a film and a story go step by step in a right felt way. You get to think that the whole film is really near to you. You cannot avoid that it ends, but if there is nobody left alive… Charming that it's from Italy.

Maybe others missed a more logic story, but well this is not literature! Here we have passionate movie from passionate filmmakers. They know what's the reason why their audience watches their movies: We want hard stuff! Deaths and fears! The joy here is to see the fall of TV-Stars. That is real justice! A not even average script has been filmed and directed to a fresh, young and powerful punch in your face! Love this movie or hate it -but well: We will definitely see these filmmakers again, no doubt on that. Lots of suspense and violence filmed in great pictures. Just take some more looks at the story, and we will be testimonials of great horror and thriller stuff!

Mediocre italian giallo, based on a novel by Niccolò ammaniti and directed by Infascelli, this movie has only a couple of excellent scenes (like the death of the comedian Rocco)on a too derivative script, that tries to make fun in a corrosive way on the power of television talk shows (the target of the writer is a notorious italian talk show), but the plot is contrived, full of holes as big as houses (while the assassin did not check the demise of the police woman, for example?), the acting is always really poor with very few exceptions (and this is a shame as most of the actors and actresses involved are normally really good). All in all, this is another example of the abysmal level of the new wave of Italian giallos, best exemplified by the terrible Il Cartaio. This one is definetily better, but only slightly so.