Dario Argento: Panico (directed by Simone Scafidi) provides an informative overview on the life and works of the Italian horror maestro. New interviews, staged sequences, and archival footage are compiled together as a sort of Argento 101, covering his life story albeit without a clear point of view or particularly deep insight.

The documentary is set up a bit clunkily, following Argento as he travels to a remote hotel outside Rome to finish a script, all in a performative, clearly staged style. Once at the hotel, his story comes to life primarily through first-person interviews (including ex-wife Marisa Casale and daughter Asia Argento) as well as his film industry contemporaries and directors he’s inspired. At a brisk 97 minutes, the film moves quickly through his childhood, career beginnings, then decades of filmmaking, never lingering too long at any particular subjects or works. It’s a solid, if not lean, overview, providing quick glimpses across his filmography and discussing his cultural impact, focusing on the man behind the camera.

In addition to explaining some of Argento’s influences and how family life shaped his work, the interviews also provide interesting contextual insight around his relative place within world cinema. His debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), became the first Italian film to hit #1 at the American box office, an achievement not only for Argento, but an amazing feat given how popular Italian cinema was in the global stage at that time, alongside Fellini, Antonioni, and more world-renowned directors. Argento’s work also reimagined music in Italian film, recruiting prog rock band Goblin to score Deep Red (Profondo rosso) (1975), bringing contemporary rock music to the giallo thriller.

As a work of documentary filmmaking, the visual staging of scenes and interviews with Argento form a steady through-line, from performance to somewhat disconnect to facing the camera directly. The premise kicking off the story is that Argento is off to write his new film, with what are surely scripted scenes of him being driven over, arriving at the hotel, checking in. As his story unfolds, amid footage of others’ interviews, Argento is staged in profile, perpendicular to the camera facing right, at times telling his story but not looking at the audience. It’s not until the film’s end, and he describes his cinematic pursuit as exploring his “dark half,” that he at last faces the camera directly. The trajectory from artifice to direct interaction feels like an opening up, from Argento the creator of fantastical, stylized worlds to the role of authentic, genuine narrator.

Perhaps it speaks to the magnitude of Argento’s career and impact that Panico doesn’t have time to quite do any of his works justice; any specific film only has a few minutes of screentime, accompanied by anecdotes, insights, and context, but soon enough we’ve moved onto the next film. For what it is, as an overview of Argento’s life and works, Panico is a valuable document, bringing together a rich variety of perspectives including, most importantly, that of Argento, reflecting on his legendary career in his own words.