European fiction and especially mystery productions are in good shape and have been garnering attention in recent years. This new seven-episode Italian series has that ingredient that personally fascinates me and always catches my attention, regardless of whether the story is better-worse or I end up liking the resolution or the characters more-less. That ingredient that I call "aesthetic ominosity" and that for me plays a role almost at the character level. Mind you, I am not just referring to that imposed ominousness of very dark scenes or gloomy scenes, obviously derived from horror movies, but when the sinister plays a much greater role than the simple staging.
In that European litter you can easily include the German DARK (2017-2020), the French Marianne (2019 and already confirmed without part 2) and BLACK SPOT (2017-2019) and even the Norwegian Ragnarok (2020-), It is not ominous enough from the aesthetic point of view but it has something of that mysterious town in the middle of landscapes as wonderful as overwhelming. The film A Cure For Wellness (2016) co-production USA-Germany can also be added to these series.
The story follows the twins Daria (Margherita Morchio) and Mauro Raina (Federico Russo) and their mother Anna (Valeria Bilello seen in Sense8) who takes them to their hometown after 17 years, to the already closed hotel that their father and escaping from a past that is complicated. When the woman disappears, the teenagers will have to face a series of mysteries, on the one hand discovering a dangerous and sinister legacy and on the other discovering that almost cursed town that seems to want to exact revenge. To blows the protagonists (including another duo of brothers with the beautiful Juju Di Domenico) will discover a curse, that when the bells of the bell tower ring in the middle of the lake (which no longer has bells) a doppelgänger will emerge from it to "replace" to its original.
Undoubtedly, the most captivating and disturbing thing about the series is precisely that bell tower that is located inside the lake. Although at first I thought that bell tower and town were fictional, I came to find out that both exist. The city is called "Curon Venosta", it has just over 2,300 inhabitants, it is located in Italy just 2 km from the border with Austria and it is the old capital of the Bolzano province, there is the curious bell tower that was part of a fourteenth century Roman church, inside Lake Resia. This lake has a very particular history: it is artificial. In 1950, the construction of a hydroelectric plant sought to link the Resia and Curon lakes. As a consequence, the bell tower of the city was submerged in water (not the whole town as in the series). Despite the fact that the bells were removed, in the town they assure that some nights they can be heard.
From that story, the creators (one of the four scripted several episodes of Suburra) deepened the idea and carried out this series of mystery and with a paranormal touch, with a hotel as screwed up as the Overlook of The Shinning, a difficult grandfather (Luca Lionello who played Judas in The Passion Of The Christ), secrets and wounds of the past and some points of contact with the soon-ending Dark, teenagers carrying the weight of the plot, mysterious caverns and the previously described ominous and paranormal environment.
Although they end up tying several of the open ends, the closure leaves the door open to continue, we will see if it can be further developed as the German or cut as the French.
