With a title like Nympha, I had high hopes for this one. When Tiffany Shepis goes full-frontal in under seven minutes, it was even more of a good sign. Sadly, this is the highlight of the movie and it all careens downhill from here especially when we learn that the title of this film is an alternate, misleading spelling of a character's name and this isn't a movie featuring Shepis as a sex-crazed entity. Even a lesbian love scene could not save this mess from requiring breaks every 20 minutes. It was like studying for an exam in that I could only take so much before I had to put the movie on hold for a few minutes and do something else for a while before returning for another segment. It's too bad because the cinematography in this low budget effort is great and Shepis is effective showing her serious side but both of these positives are wasted as the plot is as erratic as a Mexican jumping bean on Spanish fly in a legume whorehouse.

Shepis stars as Sarah, a young woman who travels to a convent to establish a relationship with God. She is taken in by a pair of nuns who seem sketchy from the get-go and soon they have Sarah stripping naked to change into her convent duds. She is then led to a filthy basement where she is visited by a doctor who proceeds to inflict some ear trauma. After returning to her room, she lays on her bed and rolls around while the flashbacks that dominate the movie begin. These feature an old man, a gardener, and a chick named Ninfa (who should really be named Nymphnot). The flashbacks and visions continue, the old man kills the gardener and leches all over Ninfa, and there are visions of Ninfa not wanting to have sex with her husband. Meanwhile, Sarah gets her eyes gouged, her hands burned, and her tongue removed but her body returns to normal every once in a while for no particular reason. Eventually, things kind of come together but not enough to make it worth the wait.

My patience for arty indie horror films is at a very low level. Occasionally, one will come along and surprise me like Mariano Baino's Dark Waters but, for the most part, I get annoyed really quickly. It didn't take long for me to dislike this movie and this was amplified by the fact that I thought I was going to get a b-movie exploitation flick as opposed to the disjointed story of a religious martyr. As the plot kept bouncing around, it was difficult to follow how things were supposed to tie together and I just don't have the time or fortitude to sit through this again to understand it better. Had there been some suspense, tension, or a more traditional character arc, I would have had more to pay attention to but this felt like a series of scenes being cut together in a way that may have only made sense to director Ivan Zuccon.

One thing that really bothers me is when people see a movie like this and immediately start comparing the flick to the work of Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci. As disjointed as these masters of horror have been at times, I always end up following the plot and enjoying their pictures. Even if I were to use a more abstract director like Jean Rollin as an example, he usually has something to set his movie permanently in your mind such as the clown makeup in Requiem for a Vampire or Brigitte Lahaie and the scythe in Fascination. Nympha does not have anything that will stand out and Zuccon's talents as a cinematographer are lost in his inability to tell a story. Just because we love Italian movies doesn't mean that they are all good. I am hoping that Zuccon has learned something about cohesive storytelling since this flick as he obviously has an eye for cinema. He just needs to find a way to make it memorable. (Josh Pasnak, 9/15/13)

Directed By: Ivan Zuccon.
Written By: Ivo Gazzarrini.

Starring: Tiffany Shepis, Caroline De Cristofaro, Allan McKenna, Michael Segal.