a review of

This is kind of a weird genre hybrid between a giallo - embodied by a dude with a butcher knife going rogue - and the italian "poliziotteschi" crime genre that i'm not yet well acquainted with at this point. The police procedural part kinda strikes me as a soaped-up mix between your average character-driven french mainstream crime drama and the german "krimi" genre focussing more on the actual crime-solving procedure. For what it is, it works surprisingly well but still feels kinda like a weird frankensteinization, not ever reaching the atmospheric heights the giallo genre might suggest while as a crime flick, it suffers from mediocre characters, some logical inconsistensies and, most of all, outdated morals. Its plot about a child abuse ring seems more concerned with the fact that teenagers have lost their virginity (actual quote: "These poor girls have been ruined.") rather than the actual psychological harm done to them while also stigmatizing the victims and denying them the agency to overcome their experiences, seeing them as nothing more than "damaged goods" (rather cynical as in... "not fit for marriage") whose future would be predetermined to turn out sad, tragic and lonely.