Rent Don't Look Now (1973)

Horror Classic. - Don't Look Now review by Steve

This is my pick for the best horror film ever made. It delivers visceral shocks in a dense atmosphere of supernatural dread among the labyrinthine canals of out-of-season Venice; which lead Donald Sutherland to an unexpected and disorientating conclusion.

There is a potent sense of intractable fatalism, and powerful horror shocks too. And it is intelligent and sensual. Sutherland plays a rationalist who is unable to save his daughter from drowning. While he restores a church his wife (Julie Chritie) pursues a growing obsession with the paranormal.

 But it is the sceptic who experiences the mysterious and frightening visions. The remarkable support cast contributes to the tone of anxiety: Hilary Mason and Clelia Mantania as the seemingly ubiquitous seers, Ranato Scarpa as an inscrutable detective, and Massimo Serato as the saturnine bishop.

They all seem to know much more than they ever say. And the grey, rainy Venice and its medieval churches provide a most ambient, sinister environment. It's flawlessly realised arthouse horror by the idiosyncratic Nicolas Roeg. And one of the best films ever made in the UK.

Psychological & Stylish Thriller - A Masterpiece - Don't Look Now review by GI

One of the most original of British films, a psychological thriller that has an almost unique sense of the macabre and a gothic milieu. This confirmed director Nicolas Roeg as one of the most interesting, stylish and innovative film makers working in the UK in the 70s. Often placed in the horror genre this is certainly a film that has a sense of dread from the very beginning and it's a film famous for its use of motifs to amplify the terrible deaths that bookend the story. The colour red being the obvious one here. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play married couple Laura and John Baxter who following the tragic death of their young daughter move to Venice where John is restoring an old church. Their lives are still haunted by loss and grief and when Laura meets two strange sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic and can see and hear their daughter, John becomes angry at Laura's instant belief in what they tell her. But they also warn that John is in danger. The film has a grim and fatalistic view of life with the only compensations being sexual fulfilment and memory. There's a celebration of the benefit of sexual relationships in a touching and, for it's time, detailed sex scene but it signposts that horror is always never far away. The wintry Venice setting sets a grim visual style that reflects the narrative that is focused on death. A masterpiece and a film worthy of repeated viewings.

Just Enough, Too Late - Don't Look Now review by griggs

Half a dozen viewings in, and Don’t Look Now still unsettles in exactly the same places. Roeg’s 1973 Venice nightmare turns grief into distorted perception: loss folds time back on itself, and the present becomes a place with nowhere safe to stand. John and Laura Baxter arrive in the city — he to restore a church, both of them trying to live with the death of their drowned daughter. Venice, naturally, is all water.

The red mackintosh threading through the film isn’t just a symbol — it’s a trap, a false comfort, a promise the film has no intention of keeping. Sutherland and Christie are extraordinary: raw, believable, hopelessly out of their depth in a city that seems built to confuse and consume them.

Roeg’s editing fractures time the way trauma does — doubling back, circling, ambushing you with what you thought you’d already processed. Weirdly, it only gets richer. What looks like thriller mechanics on first viewing reveals itself, later, as elegy. The horror isn’t that John sees too little. It’s that he sees just enough, too late.