One of the great Horror plots is a feeling of dislocation. Strangers in a strange land who do not belong and are not wanted. Don’t Look Now is especially unnerving because it deals with life-changing, unbalancing emotions – parents grieving over the loss of a child – and the location is one of the most famous unreal places, Venice Italy.
Because of its geography, Venice is a place isolated from the rest of the world. (Just like the couple are isolated from their feelings.) The husband is an architect restoring a church. The thematic parallel is obvious here. Meanwhile, he is surrounded by oddballs, freak incidents and visual moments that remind him of the terrible tragedy. The hyper filmmaking style adds to the off kilter feeling so that the viewer isn’t sure what’s happening at times, and how seemingly random events add up to a feeling of impending doom.
A lot of this is similar to The Wicker Man, and it’s not nearly as much ‘fun’, but it’s as effective and like that film, Don’t Look Now builds to a shocking finale you can never forget. It doesn’t surprise me that both films released in 1973 used to play as a Double Feature.
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