The Serpent's Fang: A dusty, dramatic relic

Is this thing worth your Tuesday night?

Honestly, it depends on how much you love old-school melodrama. If you have a soft spot for grainy black-and-white Italian cinema and don’t mind a plot that feels like it’s being held together by string and sheer willpower, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. If you need pacing that doesn't drag like a broken anchor, though, you might want to steer clear.

The whole thing feels like one long, anxious family dinner. Everyone is hiding something, and they’re all very bad at hiding it. Gino Viotti spends a good chunk of the runtime looking like he’s just swallowed a lemon, which, to be fair, is probably the correct reaction to the script.

I found myself getting distracted by the set design. There’s this one lamp in the corner of the living room scene—the one with the weirdly long tassels—that I kept staring at instead of the dialogue. It’s more interesting than half the exposition dumps.

The film has this strange habit of stopping dead just when things get interesting. You get a heated argument, a slammed door, and then… five minutes of someone walking slowly across a courtyard. It’s a choice, I guess. It reminds me of the pacing in The Last Days of Pompeii, though that one had a bit more fire, literally.

Nini Dinelli is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. She has this look—you know the one, where you’re trying to pretend you didn't just hear your husband talking to someone behind the garden shed—that she nails every single time. It’s the kind of performance that saves a scene from just being wallpaper.

• That one scene with the tea set is pure tension, mostly because I thought someone was going to drop it.
• The lighting in the library feels like it was designed by someone who really hates eyes.
• I’m still not entirely sure what the "serpent" in the title actually refers to, but maybe I just blinked during the important part.

It’s not as tightly wound as It Is the Law, but it’s got a vibe. It’s dusty. It smells like old books and secrets. Sometimes that’s enough.

The ending feels a bit rushed, like the producers realized they were running out of film stock and just yelled "cut" on the whole mess. It’s not satisfying, exactly. But it’s definitely an ending.