Step into the flames. There’s beauty in terror. Following Suspiria, Dario Argento plunged even deeper into the occult with Inferno, the second chapter in his “Three Mothers” trilogy—a dreamlike, dread-soaked puzzle box where logic is irrelevant and atmosphere reigns.

When a young woman in New York uncovers an ancient book revealing the existence of a witch living in her apartment building, a cascade of nightmare imagery is unleashed: submerged ballrooms, baroque architecture, alchemical riddles, and firelight glimpses of death.

Less a sequel than a spiritual continuation, Inferno trades plot for poetry, building a haunted world that pulses with color, shadow, and decay. With music by Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and cinematography soaked in blues and reds, this is Argento at his most abstract and operatic.