Mazzanti

Not a wonderful film obviously. But it has many merits -ie, the editing is perfectly suited for the story. When 3 hrs go by and you didn't notice, there must undoubtedly be something good there. It would have been better if it spared its last 5 minutes, but that's all too common and shouldn't bother much.

Much better than the original Phantasmagoria (though I see from other comments this may be highly debatable), for me it was like a coming of age of the -now defunct- series. It has some good acting, some puzzle-solving, some good graphics, etc., but, most important, it has a plot, a story that actually manages to interest by itself and not as something put there to glue the puzzles together. True, it becomes kind of messy in the end, and many things are there obviously only for shock effect, but, at least for me, it works. And very well.

Sold as proof of Roberta Williams' abilities as an horror writer (when she's best known for her fairy-tale King's Quest series), in fact it proves just the opposite. Much as I admire the lady, my downstairs neighbor could have devised a better plot. Technically it's poor, even when the technology wasn't still outdated. I don't comment on the puzzle-solving because there is none. What I find really scary is the tons of copies it sold, when even the just-for-effect Phantasmagoria 2 was much better. And this from someone who doesn't consider particularly picky as far as computer adventure games come.