Movie Review: Shock (1977)

Shock is the final film from Italian horror legend Mario Bava, and it's a bit of a flat note end a solid career on. It's almost creepy but not quite. The great cinematography Bava is known for is still present, at least, but it's not enough to make this a highlight of his career.

The film follows a woman named Dora (the lovely Daria Nicolodi), who moves back into her old house with her second husband and her son from her first marriage. She's moving back in after seven years away. We learn that she initially moved away after her previous husband, a drug addict, seemingly committed suicide at sea. 

Dora doesn't want to be back in the house, but her husband Bruno (John Steiner) seems to think it's a good idea. Unfortunately, the house seems to be haunted by the ghost of the old husband. Right off the bat, it's clear something is amiss. A sheet goes flying off a table while movers bring in boxes, but nobody seems to notice. It's an understated and eerie visual and one of the few genuinely creepy moments in the film. 

The ghost-dad sets about possessing the son, Marco, which doesn't sit well with Dora. He's a creepy little kid who sometimes has telekinesis and is apparently into incest. He dry humps his mom and later steals her underwear. Whether this is the result of being possessed by his ghost-dad or of his own perverse volition probably should have been made clearer.

Bruno is a pilot, and thus conveniently away from the house for most of the story. The majority of the movie is Marco being increasingly strange and Dora being increasingly paranoid. Things occasionally fall or smash as a sort of jump scare to keep the audience from dozing off. Marco makes a bizarre voodoo doll out of a photo of Bruno and a swingset, which causes the plane he is piloting to nearly crash. You know, normal possessed-kid activities. 

Eventually, after alternating scenes of Dora having nightmares about floating boxcutters and scenes of Marco pushing a slinky down the stairs, we find out the truth. It turns out that the dead husband didn't commit suicide, he was murdered! With a boxcutter! By Dora! And then the body was hidden inside the basement wall by Bruno! What a twist! It doesn't really make sense why they had to move back into the house in the first place, and this only further complicates things. Bruno claims the seven-year gap was to wait until the old husband was declared legally dead. But why move back in at all? My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

Shock isn't unwatchable, and it's hardly the worst Italian horror movie out there, but it is a disappointing end to Mario Bava's career. The possessed kid is sometimes creepy, and there's a decent Goblin-esque score, but it's just not a compelling horror movie. Other movies have told stories with haunted houses and/or possessed kids better than this before and since. It's not exactly bad, it's just kind of underwhelming. It does not, sadly, have the power to shock.