 Not all of the recent critical reaction to Tenebrae has been positive . Geoff Andrew of Time Out thought that the film was " unpleasant even by contemporary horror standards " . John Kenneth Muir , author of Horror Films of the 1980s , considers the film to be far inferior to Suspiria , but acknowledges that it was so " unremittingly gory " that it justified its US title of " Unsane " . John Wiley Martin , although evaluating the film as a " technically mesmeric " one , felt that thematically it was a " disappointingly retrograde step " for Argento . Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com referred to it as a " gory but not particularly effective Argento horror flick " , while Dennis Schwartz dismissed it as trash . Gary Johnson , editor of Images , complained that " Not much of Tenebre makes much sense . The plot becomes little more than an excuse for Argento to stage the murder sequences . And these are some of the bloodiest murders of Argento 's career . " In 2004 , Tim Lucas re @-@ evaluated the film and found that some of his earlier enthusiasm had dimmed considerably , noting that , " Tenebre is beginning to suffer from the cheap 16 mm @-@ like softness of Luciano Tovoli 's cinematography , its sometimes over @-@ storyboarded violence ( the first two murders in particular look stilted ) , the many bewildering lapses in logic ... and the overdone performances of many of its female actors " . 
