Late in the game, Lucio Fulci tackles telekinetic horror with the supernatural slasher AENIGMA, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

When unpopular girl Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) flatlines after being chased into the path of a speeding car during a prank gone horribly wrong, her body remains on life support but her vengeful spirit returns to Boston's St. Mary's College to possess new girl Eva (Lara Nazinski, A BLADE IN THE DARK) who has been admitted to the college in the middle of the term following her recovery from a nervous breakdown. Eva is roomed with kind Jennifer (Ulli Reinthaler, ZOMBI 3) but quickly lets her know that she is ready to catch up on the fun she has missed, starting with hunky gym instructor Fred (Riccardo Acerbi, FRANKENSTEIN 2000) who was in on the prank against Kathy and is the first to die of a mysterious heart attack. Kathy and Eva take their time tormenting Kathy's roommate Virginia (Kathi Wise) and there are plenty more on the list departing this world in a series of inexplicable freak accidents. Neurologist Robert Anderson (DALLAS' Jared Martin) has noted brain activity in the braindead Kathy during the deaths and posits a possible connection between Kathy and Eva.

Hampered by a low budget, typically diffused photography by Luigi Ciccarese (DEMONIA), and location shooting that substitutes Sarajevo for Boston (never convincingly), AENIGMA sounds better on paper than it plays (particularly for those of us who first came across it in reference books with no way to actually see it without resorting to the gray market). Death by snail suffocation and a statue coming to life and crushing a victim in a seven hundred pound embrace sound like prime Fulci – and Fulci was suitably impassioned with the project enough to take a "direction and special camera effects" credit for the sub-Mario Bava old school in-camera opticals – but the make-up effects of Giuseppe Ferrante (NIGHTMARE CITY) are largely downplayed, and the only plus to shooting in Yugoslavia appears to have been production facilities that could build a handful of miniature interiors (for a couple overhead soul-leaving-body shots) and some exterior mock-ups in place of crane or helicopter coverage of the locations. The film's strongest element turns out to be the synthesizer scoring of Carlo Maria Cordio (BODY PUZZLE) including the cloying theme song "Head Over Heals" which at first seems inappropriate to open the film with but the montage underneath it reveals that Fulci is quite deliberately using it to underline the cruelty to come.

Unreleased in the United States until Image Entertainment's non-anamorphic and slightly incomplete DVD release in 2001, AENIGMA had its Blu-ray debut in the UK from 88 Films in a 2K scan from the original negative framed at 1.66:1. Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a 4K scan of the negative but the framing seems to lose only a sliver on the bottom while revealing more on the sides than the UK edition. The Severin grading is darker with richer colors, revealing the UK disc to be overly bright with a sickly yellow tinge throughout. English and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks are included, with some familiar dubbing voices on the former and some more off-screen dialogue from the gaggle of schoolgirls in the latter. English SDH subitles transcribe for the English track and English subtitles translate the Italian.

Extras start off with an audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson in which they discuss the film as a sort of greatest hits of horror with its borrowings from CARRIE and PATRICK but also PHENOMENA and SUSPIRIA (noting the subplot involving the faculty and the looming portrait of the unseen headmistress goes nowhere), and how the idea of characters petrified long enough for their slow deaths does not work here as it did in the likes of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (while also noting the gruesomeness of the snail death). Howarth reveals that trade ads cited Mimsy Farmer (AUTOPSY), Andy J. Forrest (MIRANDA), and Sabrina Siani (ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE) in the lead roles, while Martin turned out to be an odd choice for the film's "name" star even though he did have some other Italian genre credits. They also note the quaint use of miniatures and how Fulci's health at the time may have changed his thematic interest in the fear of death to a dialogue with death as seen here and in films like VOICES FROM BEYOND.

"An Italian Aenigma: Appraising Late Day Fulci" (38:26), a re-edited version of the "Brain Food" piece from the 88 Films UK Blu-ray of A CAT IN THE BRAIN, features screenwriter Antonio Tentori, film critic Kim Newman, Dark Side magazine editor Allan Bryce, academic Mikel J. Koven – author of "La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film and Film" – and supplement producer Calum Waddel looking at the later works of Fulci from AENIGMA onwards – including DEMONIA, ZOMBI 3, TOUCH O DEATH, SODOMA'S GHOST, and VOICE FROM BEYOND (leaving out his "House of Doom" TV productions SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS and THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS) – admitting that the films have entertainment value but cannot help but disappoint. Waddel and Newman note that while CAT IN THE BRAIN has been seen as a precursor to WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, it was more than likely his spin on Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT while Koven suggests it is a loose remake of Fellini's 8 1/2. Waddel sees Fulci as having always been a jobbing director, not an auteur, and does not have a high opinion of CAT IN THE BRAIN although he also reiterates that the circumstances of the Italian film industry should be taken into consideration when viewing it. "Writing Nightmares" (14:21) is a brand new interview with screenwriter Giorgio Mariuzzo