Some horror movies sneak up on you, wrap icy fingers around your spine, and leave you awake at 3 a.m. questioning your life choices. The Unnaturals is not one of those movies. This one stumbles into the room like a drunk uncle at Christmas, tells you it can talk to the dead, then spends two hours proving it can barely talk to the living.
A Plot by Ouija Board Malfunction
The setup is pure Gothic cliché: rich socialites in a carriage (well, technically a car, but same energy) break down in the countryside and take shelter in a creepy house. So far, so Hammer Horror. But instead of Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, they’re greeted by Uriat, who looks like he lost a fight with an eyeliner pencil, and his mute, geriatric mom—who conveniently happens to be a medium.
Cue the séance. And here’s where things start circling the cinematic drain. Every character has a secret dark past, which should feel juicy, like the build-up to an Agatha Christie orgy. Instead, it feels like an improv class run by a hungover hypnotist: affairs are revealed, murder confessions spill out, and even a lesbian subplot is tossed in—not because the film knows what to do with it, but because someone thought “well, sex sells.”
By the time we get to the revenge angle—Uriat and his mom aren’t just spooky hosts but former servants seeking justice—the whole thing collapses into melodramatic finger pointing and lots of “ah-ha!” faces that belong on a Scooby-Doo villain.
Acting by Candlelight, or Maybe by Threat
The cast? Imagine your high school drama club got a budget and access to costumes from three different centuries. Joachim Fuchsberger and Marianne Koch were big names in Germany, but here they look like they wandered onto the wrong set and decided to wing it. Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre) tries to chew the scenery, but the scenery is so threadbare it tastes like cardboard.
At one point the camera literally dangles upside down during a séance, because cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini was hung from the ceiling with the camera in hand. It’s meant to look eerie. It looks like the cameraman fainted and nobody thought to cut.
Gothic Without the Guts
There are some faint embers of atmosphere: stormy nights, candlelit faces, whispers from the void. But for every ounce of mood, the film piles on a pound of boredom. The pacing is glacial, the dialogue sounds like it was written during a séance with a drunk typewriter, and the big “justice is served” twist lands with all the impact of a deflated balloon.
You want The Haunting. You get The Haunting… of My Patience.
Final Verdict
The Unnaturals isn’t scary, it isn’t sexy, and it isn’t clever. It’s like someone invited Gothic horror, revenge melodrama, and a lesbian subplot to dinner, then forgot to cook anything. Sure, it made 287 million lire in Italy, but so did pasta, and pasta doesn’t waste two hours of your life.
If you’re looking for séance thrills, rewatch The Innocents. If you’re looking for Gothic revenge, try Black Sunday. If you’re looking for The Unnaturals, maybe ask Uriat’s mom to contact its ghost—because whatever it wanted to be, it never really materialized.
