When approaching a new film by a director like Dario Argento, especially one called Giallo, it becomes near impossible to separate the film from the director’s past body of work. Argento’s name is often uttered in the same breath when speaking on the giallo genre, a slew of 70s Italian mystery films that valued bloody style over substance, but his more recent work finds audiences less forgiving of the lack of substance when you eliminate the style. His films since the early 90s have strayed far enough from his previous artistry that he has fallen off the list of horror directors whose works I would recommend to non-fans of the genre.

Still, when I heard that Argento was making a film called Giallo, I thought it was reasonable to expect he was making some sort of grand statement – perhaps announcing a cinematic celebration of the genre. Now that I’ve had the chance to see the film, I can verify that the title isn’t just referential of its genre – a la Pulp Fiction – but refers to the Italian word for yellow, a major plot point in the story. And its a good thing too, because Giallo is not the back-to-basics triumph I had stubbornly hoped it would be, but another humdrum pastiche of the master’s better efforts.

Following a recent spate of kidnappings and murders in Italy, Detective Enzo Avolfi (Adrian Brody) teams up with one of the victim’s sisters (Emmanuelle Seigner) to track the killer. Enzo is of the brooding, chain-smoking loner type of detective, working in the basement of the police department. The walls of his office are covered with pictures of brutalized victims and he eats and sleeps amongst them, surrounding himself with the case. You see, he’s the only one who can catch this killer because of his secret past.

Again betraying its referential name, Giallo sure skimps on the genre’s signature elements. We are introduced to the elusive kidnapper and killer fairly early on, (played by Byron Diedra – check out the anagram there,) a long-haired degenerate who sucks on a pacifier and speaks in a rigid sort of baby talk. By removing the mystery of his identity, we also remove much of the films suspense, as his screen time consists mostly of torturing the women he catches and then masturbating to pictures of their suffering. Maybe Argento was attempting to revisit the heightened fetishism of his past works, but this ventures a bit closer to gross-out than eroticizing a straight-razor.

In fact, Giallo is often content to riff on the director’s past works, revisiting themes and scenes like the opening spooky taxi ride and the finale on a perilous rooftop, but I see little point to revisiting such iconic scenes if Argento’s not going to attempt to best himself. Many of the more violent scenes lack the stylization and expansiveness of Profondo Rosso or Tenebre, recalling instead the “torture porn” of Saw and Hostel. The film as a whole has a weird TV-movie vibe – from the bright lighting to the dishwater camera work – that manages to blanche the life from a bustling urban Italy. Through it all, Brody, who acts as both star and co-producer, is one-note but somehow believable as a character who is more cliché than human, but poor Emmanuelle Seigner walks that thin line between hysterics and histrionics, and doesn’t always come out on the right side.

I hope I’m not coming across too harsh, I appreciate that Giallo is not as silly or artificial as Argento’s last film Mother of Tears, it’s just that it’s relatively bland. I had no problem investing myself in the stoney characters enough to make it to the end, but there’s little to enjoy here that you won’t find in this week’s Law and Order. As an artist who has spent his golden years cozying up to his glory days, perhaps the keg is finally tapped.

I’ve heard that some audiences have latched onto Giallo as a comedy event, less a deconstruction than a broad parody of the genre, and while I can see the entertainment value there, I found it hard to enjoy such a straight-faced film against its tone. Those who lack intimate knowledge of the genre are probably better off not even trying.