Phenomena, the film where a girl can telepathically communicate with insects and that's the least weirdest thing in the movie!Jennifer (Jennifer Connolly) is sent to a prestigious Swiss boarding school but no sooner than she arrives --and eats some baby food-- she is informed by her roommate, Sophie (Frederica Mastroianni), that a killer is stalking the town and murdering young girls. Jennifer has a spiritual connection with bugs and also sleepwalks to the killer and eventually finds her way to the home of a famed entomologist who specializes in cadaver insects, Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasance). McGregor tells Jennifer that telepathy is actually weirdly common in bugs and that she should use her ability to follow the flies to track down the killer through his victims. Which kind of works, but mostly doesn't. Also, there is a chimpanzee with a straight razor. It gets weird.
This is fairly restrained for a Dario Argento film. Nobody gets gratuitously nude, for starters, and the gore isn't wall-to-wall. There is really only the loosest semblance of a plot and a lot of reliance on "Women Be Crazy" to sell the whole thing, but again, fairly restrained for an Argento.
Jennifer Connolly (and her amazing, super-shiny hair) is the only reason to watch this film. She TALKS to BUGS and uses that to SOLVE CRIME. That is objectively the least horrifying use of that skill. I would genuinely love a follow-on movie where an adult Jennifer uses her bugs as a P.I. It doesn't even have to be a horror movie. Just a whodunit. Until that happens, the original is streaming on Tubi for free or Amazon with a Prime subscription.
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