The curtain falls on our Dario Argento restrospective with a scream. For the final act, we present Opera—a film that distills all of the maestro’s obsessions into one glorious, nightmarish aria.

A young opera singer, thrust into the spotlight during a cursed production of Macbeth, finds herself stalked by a sadistic killer who forces her to watch as her friends die in increasingly elaborate set pieces. What follows is Argento’s most technically virtuosic and perversely beautiful film, where horror and high art bleed into one another—sometimes literally.

Featuring infamous sequences involving needles taped beneath the eyes, flocks of vengeful ravens, and a thunderous metal-infused score, Opera is both a love letter to cinema and a howl of rage from a filmmaker pushing the Giallo form to its breaking point. As the camera swoops, the bodies fall, and the aria rises, Opera reminds us: no one stages death like Dario Argento.