Il caso Valdemar Review: Creepy Old Silent Horror That Actually Works

If you love dusty old silent horror and have twenty minutes to spare, yes, Il caso Valdemar is absolutely worth a look. Modern horror fans who need jump scares and crisp CGI will probably get bored in about four seconds flat.

It’s a super old Italian short based on that creepy Edgar Allan Poe story about a guy hypnotized right when he's dying. Basically, a doctor decides to see if he can keep a dying man's soul trapped in his body using hypnosis.

The actor playing the dying Valdemar has this incredibly intense stare. His eyes just sort of bulge out of his head, and it actually gets pretty uncomfortable to watch after a while. 😳

The lighting is so primitive that half the room is just pitch black. But that actually makes it way creepier than modern movies with million-dollar lighting budgets.

It reminds me a bit of how they handled tension in Dust, where the silence does most of the heavy lifting. Except here, the silence feels less like a artistic choice and more like they just didn't have any other option back then.

There's this one shot of a hand twitching on a bedsheet that goes on for what feels like two minutes. I swear the camera operator must have fallen asleep or something.

And the doctor, played by Gino Eprisi, keeps making these wildly dramatic gestures with his arms. He looks like he’s trying to land a plane rather than hypnotize a dying guy.

The print I saw was pretty beat up, with lines running down the screen constantly. Honestly, the scratches on the film make it feel even more like some cursed tape you shouldn't be watching.

If you want something fast-paced like The Sunset Trail, this is not that. It's just a slow, weird little nightmare from the past.

It ends so abruptly too. The guy finally wakes up, says something creepy, and then boom, it's over.