 Not all of the recent critical reaction to Tenebrae has been positive. Geoff Andrew of Time Out thought that the film was "unpleasant even by contemporary horror standards". John Kenneth Muir, author of Horror Films of the 1980s, considers the film to be far inferior to Suspiria, but acknowledges that it was so "unremittingly gory" that it justified its US title of "Unsane". John Wiley Martin, although evaluating the film as a "technically mesmeric" one, felt that thematically it was a "disappointingly retrograde step" for Argento. Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com referred to it as a "gory but not particularly effective Argento horror flick", while Dennis Schwartz dismissed it as trash. Gary Johnson, editor of Images, complained that "Not much of Tenebre makes much sense. The plot becomes little more than an excuse for Argento to stage the murder sequences. And these are some of the bloodiest murders of Argento's career." In 2004, Tim Lucas re-evaluated the film and found that some of his earlier enthusiasm had dimmed considerably, noting that, "Tenebre is beginning to suffer from the cheap 16 mm-like softness of Luciano Tovoli's cinematography, its sometimes over-storyboarded violence (the first two murders in particular look stilted), the many bewildering lapses in logic ... and the overdone performances of many of its female actors".
