Challenge the Devil

Similarly to the earlier examples of Italian Gothic Horror, Katarsis was set in contemporary Italy, with weird results. … The protagonists spend a seemingly endless amount of time wandering through dark rooms that lead nowhere, endless spiral staircases and even a maze of transparent glasses that recall amusement park labyrinths. It is just a way to pad a thin story to an acceptable running time, yet it does reveal a way of conceiving the Fantastic not as a source of shock but as a limbo where time and space blur, and in which one can float indefinitely: anxiety and fear come from the loss of spacial coordinates and the discovery (always inconclusive) of new ones replacing the previous.

Though it often looks and feels like a student film, Katarsis has loads of atmosphere…