Giovanni Visentin – Through the Shattered Lens

In 2004’s The Card Player, a serial killer is haunting the streets of Rome. He’s abducting women and then taunting the police by demanding that they play online poker with him. If the police win a hand, the woman goes free. If the police lose, the woman is tortured and killed on a webcam. Unfortunately, it turns out that the police are lousy at playing poker. Actually, they’re lousy at just about everything. Whenever I watch The Card Player, I find myself imagining that I’m watching an episode of Law & Order: Remedial Police Unit. That’s a spin-off from the original Law & Order. It features incompetent, poorly trained detectives who are constantly forgetting to Mirandize suspects. I’m surprised that no one else has ever seen it.

There are two cops who are slightly competent. Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is the daughter of a man who wrote a book about how to play poker. (Hey, that might be helpful!) John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is a tough Irish cop who is sent to Italy after the Card Player kills two British tourists. While the rest of the police force stands around and stares at the office computer all day, Anna Mari and Brennan actually try to track the killer down.

Oh, The Card Player. This film is often cited as being Dario Argento’s worst. To be honest, I think that’s a bit of an overreaction. The film’s not so much bad as it’s just kind of boring. It plays out like a police procedural and there’s little of Argento’s signature visual flair. There are way too many shots of people staring at screens with serious expressions on their faces. Like so many other directors before him, Argento struggles to find a way to make watching someone else play an online game interesting. Eventually, the police do win a hand and I cringed as all of the extras in the police station broke out into cheers. It felt corny and a bit silly. It definitely did not feel like Argento.

That said, the murders are memorably gruesome and the scenes where the bodies are recovered and then examined in the morgue are pure nightmare fuel. Argento tosses in a dancing coroner who takes way too much pleasure in discussing things like the cause of death. The sight of the coroner dancing brings to mind the moment in Tenebrae where John Saxon is stabbed in public and none of the witnesses seem to be particularly disturbed. There’s a chilling callousness to the moment and a reminder of why Argento often portrays insects as being more trustworthy and empathetic than humans. Stefania Rocca gives a good performance in a role that was originally meant to be played by Asia Argento. Liam Cunningham is today known more for his political vacuousness than his acting talent but he’s still believably rugged and cynical as Brennan.

Finally, the film’s depiction of online poker is very much a late-90s version of the Internet. Everything loads slowly, the graphics are awkward and stiff, and the whole thing projects a feeling of “Can you believe people actually pay for this?” Seen in 2026, it’s actually kind of charming. The old internet was so dorky that it was impossible not to love it.

The Card Player is pretty forgettable, especially when compared to Argento’s earlier films or, for that matter, a film like Sleepless. It’s not as bad as some say but it’s definitely not top-rate Argento.

The (Reviewed) Films of Dario Argento:

The 1986 Italian film, The Killer Is Still Among Us, is based on the crimes of the Monster of Florence, the serial killer who is Italy’s version of the Zodiac Killer.

The film opens with two young lovers being brutally killed by an unseen killer. The killer shoots both the man and the woman multiple time and then drags the woman out of the car, with the film suggesting that he’s going to further abuse the dead woman with both a knife and a tree branch. It’s a graphic scene and the first of three murders, each one of which is more explicit than the previous one.

Christiana Marelli (Mariangela D’Abbraccio) is young criminology student who has written her thesis on the Monster of Florence. Her theory is that the murderer is either a doctor or a butcher, someone who is good with a knife. (“Perhaps he is a boy scout,” her professor says, “they are good with knives as well.”) For some reason, Christiana’s thesis scandalizes both her professor and the police, even though there’s nothing particularly shocking about her conclusion. Her basic argument is that a killer who mutilates his victims with a knife might work in a profession where he regularly handles sharp instruments. Wow, that’s really thinking outside the box.

Anyway, Christiana continues to investigate the crimes, to the point of becoming obsessed with them. At an autopsy, she meets a medical intern named Alex (Giovanni Visentin) and soon, she and Alex are a couple. However, Christiana cannot fail to notice that Alex doesn’t even seem to be that interested in talking about the murders and that Alex always seems to be out of the apartment whenever the murders occur. Is Alex the murderer or is Christiana’s paranoia getting the better of her?

There’s one interesting and genuinely frightening scene in The Killer Is Still Among Us, in which Christiana goes to a séance. The idea is to contact the spirit of the Monster’s last victim but instead, Christiana and everyone else at the séance has a violent vision of the Monster’s latest murder, with the medium even getting wounds on his body corresponding to the wounds suffered by the Monster’s victims. When Christiana hears that they’ve just seen a murder that’s currently happenings, she runs from the room to find Alex. It’s an effectively shot and performed scene but it’s the exception to the majority of this slow-moving film.

The main problem with this film is that Christiana often behaves in a way that only makes sense if you accept that she’s a total idiot. One night, while she’s at the police station, she spots a gynecologist named Doctor Franco M. Benincasa (Luigi Mezzanotte) being brought in after being arrested for being a peeping tom. One of the cops mentions that they arrest the doctor nearly every night. (And yet he still has his medical license?) Christiana and the doctor both stare straight at each other. Christiana decides that the doctor is an obvious suspect so what does she do? She makes an appointment to see him on the following day. Christiana goes to his office and pretends to be a patient but Dr. Benincasa looked straight at her the night before so how does Christiana, who makes no attempt to disguise her appearance, think that she’s going to get away with pretending not to know who he is? Needless to say, the doctor recognizes Christiana as soon as he sees her and Christiana has to flee from the office.

(Christiana did bring her friend, Chiara, played by Yvonne D’Abbraccio, with her but Chiara promptly abandons Christiana at the office of a potential murderer because Chiata’s suffering from cramps. To be honest, I would probably do the same.)

The Killer Is Still Among Us ends without resolution, just a title card informing us that this movie was made as a warning to young people about the Monster of Florence. Whatever.