Venice Premiere for Italian Horror ‘The Spiral’

The Venice Film Festival has a new guilty pleasure.

The hometown crowd went wild Monday night for the world premiere of The Spiral, a campy, fun Italian horror thriller from director Paolo Strippoli (The Holy Boy, A Classic Horror Story).

Jasmine Trinca (Saint Laurent, The Caiman) stars as Anna, a controlling mother who makes a deal with the devil, in the form of a trench coat-wearing, chain-smoking Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, to save her daughter Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano) after a gruesome accident. But the agreement sets off a, you guessed it, spiral of macabre events that will end up tearing the family apart. Adriano Giannini plays Anna’s wealthy alpha-male businessman husband, Walter. Andrea Genovese plays their son Tobia.

The twisty genre film, which dips into Grand Guignol territory, with plenty of OTT performances — led by Tedeschi’s glorious turn — may be an outsider for the Golden Lion, but it definitely played for the Venice audience, which gave it a warm and enthusiastic standing ovation, with the director and cast coaxing the crowd to keep clapping past the 9-minute mark.

Whether that will be enough to convince the Venice jury, headed by The Bride! director Maggie Gyllenhaal, remains to be seen. But at a Venice where fun has been in short supply, The Sprial, came as a welcome palate cleanser.

The Spiral next heads to Toronto, where it’s screening in the popular Midnight Madness section. Le Pacte, which is handling international sales for the film, will be hopeful for its prospects. Given the film’s high-concept premise, remake rights could also be in play.

The film hits Italian theaters Oct. 8, released by 01 Distribution.