An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at Netflix’s 2020 Italian horror film, The Binding (Il Legame in Italian)
After arriving at the home of her fiancé’s mother in Southern Italy, Emma (Mia Maestro) discovers her daughter has been cursed by a malevolent evil.
Is it Scary?
The Binding had all the ingredients to be scarier than it was. There are a few jump scares that don’t feel cheap but where it could’ve shone was the atmosphere and tension it was creating. There are a couple of well-done scenes where the suspense is pretty high and then there’s either no pay off or the movie just doesn’t go for that type of scene again.
This doesn’t make The Binding a bad movie but just one that you can definitely tell it has a few missed opportunities. Overall you won’t be scared unless you have to travel to the outskirts of Southern Italy to meet with someone who maybe dabbles in black magic.
Detailed Plot:
The film opens with a lot of yelling as the opening credits roll. We cut to what looks like an exorcism of a young woman. As she kneels on the ground (still yelling) several men hold out her arms while another woman uses a knife to leave a 6-inch gash on her shoulder blade.
The woman forces the exorcise-e (is that the proper term for the person being exorcised?) to look at a mirror which promptly breaks. That can’t be super helpful to the self-esteem of the thing possessing her.
As her yelling fades out we get some text on screen in Italian telling us what the ‘Binding’ is:
“Binding refers to a psychic condition of impediment or inhibition and a sense of domination as performed by a powerful malign influence which affects a person’s autonomy and capacity to decide and choose.
Commonly known as the evil eye, it is carried out through magic rituals that establish The Binding between victim and perpetrator.
These practices have long been rooted in the South of Italy.”
Basically it’s a magical possession. Despite this whole wall of text, I guarantee someone will verbally define what the binding is to another character later in the movie.
We fade in to a lovely countryside and we meet our main characters; mother and daughter Emma and Sofia, (played by Mia Maestro and Giulia Patrignani respectively) and Emma’s fiancé Francesco (played by Riccardo Scamarcio).
The three are on their way to surprise Francesco’s old fashioned mother with a visit and some news. Arriving at a mansion on a large estate, they are greeted by Tito the dog and Sabrina, the live-in maid (played by Raffaella D’Avella).
Sabrina directs them all to their rooms but Sofia hears the sounds of a baby crying down one of the halls and decides to investigate on her own. She peaks through the crevice of an open door which slams shut on it’s own, causing her to run off. We never see what she saw and when Sofia returns to her mother, she doesn’t mention the creepy shit that just happened.
While Sofia and Emma get situated in their rooms, Emma spots what looks like mold on one of the corners of the ceiling. Walking out onto the balcony, the two startle a crow that was eating a dead bird nearby. At this point I have to ask how many bad omens does someone need?
Francesco finds the two and finally introduces them to his mother, Teresa (played by Mariella Lo Sardo). As the group take a walk on Teresa’s estate, we learn she was aware of them visiting but does not know Francesco and Emma are engaged, which is the surprise.
Before Francesco can tells his mother the news, she informs him they have to get ready for their guests which she claims is just the “usual crowd”. A little while later the group along with several guests are having lunch and Emma notices several scars on Sabrina’s arm that she promptly covers up.
As they get ready to eat, the group all hold hands, close their eyes, and recite a prayer aloud. With the building music in the background, this all comes off as very cultish. Based on Emma and Sofia’s reaction, they weren’t given the memo. Emma also appears surprised at Francesco’s participation in it.
After the prayer, Sofia is the only one to ask “what the fuck was that?” (I’m paraphrasing). Teresa tells them it’s an old prayer said to protect family and those who are about to become a part of it. She then announces to the group that Francesco and Emma are getting married.
Everyone congratulates the two and we cut to a little while later with Emma answering a whole host of questions about her life. Meanwhile Sofia is playing with Tito who decides to run off. Sofia chases after him alone and this is all starting to feel like a trap.
She ends up at a large grove with multiple overturned trees and follows Tito’s barking’s to one specific tree.
At the tree, Sofia spots a wind chime hanging from it and for some reason she decides to climb the tree to get it. In a jump scare Francesco grabs her, playfully asking what she’s doing.
Sofia asks about the trees and Francesco tells her they were sick but his mother knows some magic to cure them. As they walk off, Emma looks around the trees suspiciously in order to build up dramatic tension?
That night while Emma and Francesco have sex there’s a jump scare when Emma spots someone watching them from the door. Honestly, that’s on them for not closing the door. Emma thinks it was Sofia but when she goes to check on her, she finds her sound asleep.
Continuing down the dark, barely lit, hall to look for the peeping tom/tammy, we get a pretty tense scene where you’re just expecting a jump scare.
Following footsteps, Emma sees someone running past the stairs below but doesn’t see who they are. Back with Francesco she says she thinks it was Sabrina despite not having any evidence besides that she’s been creepy.
Meanwhile Sofia is awoken by some weird cracking sounds (like someone snapping very thin twigs) in her room and, I think, sees something in the corner; it’s too dark to tell.
She then hears the cracking sounds coming from under her bed and, completely forgetting that’s where monsters live, she decides to check. We cut to the hall where Sofia’s screams are heard and Francesco and Emma rush out of their room.
In Sofia’s room, they find her clutching her shoulder which is revealed to have some kind of bite. Francesco looks around the room and finds a spider, killing it immediately. Teresa and Sabrina enter and Teresa rejects Emma’s idea of taking Sofia to a hospital. Sabrina hands Teresa a small tin and she applies it on the bite, claiming it’s some herbs and disinfectant.
The following morning Emma sees Sofia outside with Teresa and we see Teresa place a small cloth bag in Sofia’s pocket. She tells her to keep it with her as it will keep her safe. It’s not clear if Emma can hear Teresa say this but judging from the distance, probably not.
Emma gets ready to leave the room but spots the mold on the ceiling growing.
Outside Sofia sits with Tito and opens the cloth bag finding small bones among other random things. Emma shows up and asks what the bag is but Sofia angrily tells her she can’t touch it. Before Emma can react, her work cell rings and she walks away.
Sofia wanders the opposite way and finds Teresa with one of the sick trees. After Teresa tells her she’ll show her how to cure the tree, she looks on ominously at Sofia’s shoulder.
A little while later Emma finally gets off the phone, earlier we learned she’s a construction engineer and pretty dedicated to her job. As she’s about to head out of the house, she hears someone praying and follows the sounds to the same door where Sofia heard a baby earlier.
Peaking through the slightly open door, she sees Teresa and Sabrina giving someone a glass of yellow water along with several cutting implements on a table. As Teresa moves out of the way, their patient is revealed to be Sofia.
Emma busts in the room demanding to know what’s in the drink and Teresa tells her is just a natural remedy. Emma drags Sofia out of the room and takes her outside demanding she ask her first before drinking any random thing.
Sofia argues and runs off as Francesco arrives questioning what is going on. Emma explains and he agrees to talk to his mother despite downplaying the event.
We cut to Sofia who is now sitting with Tito at the tree with the wind chime from earlier. Tito starts barking at something in the distance. We then see someone standing in the very far off distance by several trees and they’re pretty hard to spot. Apparently for Tito and Sofia it’s pretty easy since Tito keeps barking and Sofia appears terrified.
The figure moves ever so slightly causing Sofia to scream and run off.
Sofia falls but Emma is right there to pick her up. She also picks up the cloth bag that Teresa gave Sofia despite the warnings from earlier that she wasn’t allowed to touch it.
Back at the house after putting Sofia in her room, Emma wanders around looking for Teresa and finds a storage room. There, she finds a box full of envelopes and decides to open one despite her goal being to find Teresa. I’m pretty sure Teresa doesn’t fit in an envelope.
Before she can open it she is startled by Teresa walking in. Emma confronts her about the cloth bag and Teresa tells her she is overreacting as some things are beyond her comprehension. Francesco walks in and Emma tells him they’re leaving in the morning before storming out of the room.
Teresa picks up the envelope and pulls out the card inside which is revealed to be a wedding invitation for Francesco and Ada’s wedding from 1980! What the fuck is going on. Wait, how old is Francesco? When does this movie take place? Who is Ada?
That night Sofia pulls out some of her hair and wraps it around a bundle of sticks that she places on her nightstand. We then see Emma tell Francesco that she will be sleeping with Sofia as she shoots daggers at Teresa.
Later Emma wakes up to the sounds of scratching and looks over to see Sofia standing in the corner scratching at her arm in the dark.
Emma gets up and, for some reason, very slowly approaches Sofia. Turning her around we see her eyes wide open but in some kind of trance. She stops scratching at the bloody arm and shrieks before collapsing on the ground.
Francesco and Teresa run into the room and the three see Sofia’s spider bite on her shoulder has gotten worse. The following morning Emma and Francesco take her to a doctor and we learn it’s a tarantula bite. So this won’t be a Spider-Woman origin tale. The doctor tells Emma Sofia will be fine in a few days and gives her some medicine.
In the car Emma notices the medicine the doctor gave them resembles the drink Teresa was giving Sofia earlier. She refuses to give it to her and tells Francesco she wants to bring Sofia back home, but he says they should wait for Sofia’s fever to drop.
Meanwhile back at the house, Sabrina finds the bundle of sticks Sofia wrapped her hair around and grabs it with a handkerchief. With Teresa, she recites a prayer and sprinkles something into a bowl before Teresa grabs the bundle and breaks it.
This has an immediate reaction to Sofia who starts hyperventilating in the car, though it only lasts a few moments. Arriving at the house, Emma tells Francesco she doesn’t want Teresa to touch Sofia and Francesco agrees. So I have no idea if I should be rooting for him.
That night after putting a worsening Sofia to bed, Emma hears someone talking in the hall and goes to investigate. There she finds Francesco and Teresa who request to speak with her. Teresa tells her the medicine won’t help and reveals that Sofia has been bound by a curse. DUN DUN DUNNNN
Emma tells them they lost their damn minds (I’m paraphrasing) but Francesco pleads with her to trust Teresa. Meanwhile Sofia’s room starts to shake and she begins to choke. The door then slams on it’s own calling the attention of the adults.
Wait!
Is that why no one closes doors, it’s a warning system?!
As she continues to choke, Sofia reaches into her mouth and pulls out a long piece of twine or hair? I couldn’t tell but I could tell that is was fucking gross. The adults break into the room just as she finishes pulling out the hair/twine and Emma immediately accuses Teresa of being the cause.
Francesco looks under Sofia’s bed and finds it filled with thin branches as if they were growing from the floor. He breaks off a piece and shows Teresa who fearfully says ‘it’s her’.
Later, Emma secretly takes Francesco’s car keys just as he walks into the room and it’s now exposition time. Francesco tells Emma when he was young, he fell for another girl his age named Ada, who worked at the house.
They fell in love and Ada became pregnant. Before their wedding date, she came down with an illness that Teresa was unable to cure. The illness caused her to lose the baby and drove her mad with grief after which she disappeared.
Emma then asks exactly what I was thinking, what the hell does that have to do with her and Sofia? Teresa tells her that all Ada ever wanted was a child with Francesco and since Sofia is like a daughter to him, Ada used the tarantula to create a binding with Sofia.
Teresa further says that she knows how to remove the binding but Emma feigns belief and runs out of the room, locking them in. She runs to Sofia and carries her out to the car. Before she can drive off Sabrina knocks on the window and reveals the scars on her arm were from Ada. Emma ignores her and drives off.
As Emma races off, Sofia starts hyperventilating in the backseat. Emma turns around to check on her and when she turns back around, a women in a white dress appears in the middle of the road. Emma swerves out of the way and crashes.
The crash causes her to lose consciousness and when she wakes up, guess whose gone? Francesco catches up to her and questions where Sofia is. Emma tells him she saw Ada as she loses consciousness again. Waking back up at the house, Sabrina tends to Emma’s wounds and Teresa informs her that Francesco has gone out to look for Ada and Sofia.
And, it’s time for more exposition!
Teresa tells Emma that the thing that made Ada sick was something malevolent and we cut back to the opening scene of the movie. Turns out the exorcism was being conducted on Ada (played by Federica Rosellini) and the woman holding the mirror was Teresa. So, by malevolent she means demonic but the movie doesn’t outwardly say that so it might not necessarily be a demonic possession.
But wait, there’s more! Teresa reveals that it was all Francesco’s fault! After finding out Ada was pregnant, Francesco didn’t believe he was ready to be a father so he decided to perform a ritual in secret in order to make Ada lose the baby.
It all went wrong and he accidentally let something malevolent possess Ada. This is information I feel Francesco should have mentioned during his exposition scene.
Teresa was unable to reverse it and before she could attempt anything else Ada ran off, never to be heard from or seen again… until Emma arrived with Sofia. Teresa then tells Emma she knows of a unification ceremony that will remove the binding but it can backfire and cause Emma to be bound to Ada instead.
Meanwhile Francesco has found Ada and enters her cave where I guess she’s just been hanging out for the last 20-30 years. She caresses an unconscious Sofia and tells Francesco she did it for them.
I have no idea what Francesco’s plan was here because Ada walks up to him, caresses his cheek, and kisses him without any pushback. She then bites his lip which causes him to immediately become bound to her. What was the fucking plan Francesco?!
Back at the house the women perform a ritual that allows Emma to astral project directly to Sofia. Which makes me wonder why the hell Francesco went out looking for her in the first place.
Emma appears in the cave and sees the unconscious Sofia and Francesco as well as a demonic looking Ada. Demon-Ada senses something is off but Emma rushes over to Francesco and attempts to wake him up. As he wakes up vomiting, Emma also wakes up back at the house in a jump scare.
Back in the cave Demon-Ada cuts her hand and drips blood down into Sofia’s mouth, not noticing Francesco has woken up. Francesco stumbles over to Ada and jumps on her back, dragging her to the ground. The two struggle with Francesco gaining the upper-hand as he strangles Demon-Ada to death.
He crawls over to Sofia completely ignoring the double-tap rule of horror which ends up exactly as how you would predict.
As dawn breaks or as I like to say, at the ass crack of dawn, Emma and Teresa find the caves along with a barely conscious Sofia with no signs of Ada or Francesco. Emma carries Sofia out of the caves and the three rush back to the house where Sabrina is waiting with several ritual items.
Teresa tells Emma she has to mix Sofia’s blood with hers in order to bind Sofia to her. In a pretty gnarly scene Teresa lances the now protruding, bubble-like and clearly infected tarantula bite to take some of her blood. Sabrina then gives Teresa a small mirror and mirroring the opening scene (pun intended) she puts it in front of Sofia.
The mirror begins to crack and Sabrina and Teresa share disheartened look. Your reflection causing a mirror to crack is never a good thing regardless if you’re possessed or not. Emma questions what it means but before Teresa can respond, a loud scream is heard and all the windows explode.
After composing themselves, Teresa continues drawing Sofia’s blood when the sounds of light cracking alerts them that Ada has entered the house. I guess her screams and the exploding windows wasn’t a sure enough sign.
Sabrina hands Emma a large pair of scissors and heads off to face Ada alone.
So she’s dead.
As Sabrina’s final screams echo throughout the house, Teresa finishes drawing Sofia’s blood and reciting her prayers. She tells Emma she only needs her blood to mix with Sofia’s in order to complete the ritual. Just as Emma is about to cut her hand, her eyes gloss over telling us she’s been bound to Ada.
Now possessed, Emma positions the large pair of scissors in order to stab her own heart but Teresa is able to push her hands enough to cause Emma to impale herself in the shoulder. She falls unconscious next to Sofia as her blood starts to seep out and… we all see where this is going right?
From the shadows Ada tosses Francesco’s bloody glasses over to Teresa which causes her to start sobbing. Instead of running, walking away, or even grabbing some of Emma’s seeping blood, Teresa just stands there as Ada appears and begins whispering a prayer. Ada reaches into her own mouth which for some reason causes Teresa to start choking.
This doesn’t make sense since the only other character that was choking due to Ada was Sofia but that was only because she was bound to her. Teresa is not bound to Ada so she shouldn’t be able to make her choke telepathically.
Anyway Teresa falls unconscious just as Emma’s blood finally reaches Sofia’s blood and mixes together. Sofia wakes up, sees demon-Ada, and tries to crawl away.
Ada lunges at Sofia and screams in her face. Probably just letting out the anger of realizing that she is no longer bound to her. Before she can do anything else, Emma stabs her in the neck with the scissors, killing her.
The following day Sofia is playing a song on the piano that Francesco taught her earlier as Emma checks on her. The film ends with Teresa performing a ritual in her room as we see Sofia touch her neck with a pained look on her face. Somewhere in the caves a dead Francesco reawakens. Sequel baiting!
What Happened in the End?
Earlier in the film Teresa tells Emma she would do anything for her son and that’s why she kept the secret of his failed ritual attempt. It’s heavily implied, at the end of the film, Teresa performs another ritual in order to bring Francesco back to life and binds him with Sofia.
Review:
If you’re into slow-burn horror movies, The Binding is pretty good. The acting is nothing to write home about but it’s also not bad, except for one scene where Sofia (Giulia Patrignani) first sees Ada and it feels like she’s overacting the fear. To be fair, I did watch the movie multiple times since I wanted to watch it in Italian (for line delivery) and then in English, and the first time I saw that scene I had no idea what she was reacting to. Maybe that influenced my dislike for the acting.
The story is pretty simple but was teetering on being predictable, the ending was still very predictable. For most of the movie you’re trying to figure out who can be trusted, what is everyone hiding, and is there really a supernatural element to it all.
The movie does an okay job keeping up the puzzle games but does cheat in certain parts; the growing mold apparently had nothing to do with the story, the sick trees don’t factor into anything, and Ada’s abilities seem to change based on what the movie wants.
Though there were a few good/interesting revelations that made sense such as Teresa not being a villain and Francesco’s involvement with Ada’s possession. Prior to that it felt like Francesco’s character was just there to be there, since we know nothing about him, but once that revelation was told his character had a slight purpose.
The biggest negative for me was the film not utilizing it’s scary settings enough. There’s a tense scene at night, in the barely-lit house, where Emma is wandering around but that sort of scene never really happens again. Sofia being stalked by Ada from far away was a pretty good slow-burn scare that also never happens again. Feels like some missed opportunities.
Overall I would recommend The Binding, especially to anyone who likes a slow-burn horror movie but if you like the fast paced, jump scare heavy movie’s maybe leave this one for a rainy day.
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Stuff to Ignore
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