Piove (2022)

In Rome, a strange phenomenon occurs in the sewer system: a gray substance emits a vapor when it comes into contact with rainwater. If inhaled, the vapor causes people to experience increasingly intense hallucinations, which lead to physical changes and violent behavior. This triggers a wave of murders across the city that no one can explain. Thomas is a widowed father who juggles two jobs to support himself and his children, Enrico and Barbara. The family is still traumatized by a recent tragedy: the loss of its matriarch, Cristina. One evening, she had gone with Enrico in Thomas’s place to pick Barbara up from a party, but they had been in a serious car accident after Enrico accidentally burst a balloon Barbara had brought with her. The children survived, though Enrico was left with a scar on his face and Barbara lost the use of her legs. Since Cristina’s death, the relationship between Enrico and Thomas has suffered badly. Thomas neglects his son to devote himself to Barbara’s rehabilitation, while Enrico, blaming himself for the accident, has become self-destructive, skipping school and seeing a prostitute in an attempt to make up for his mother’s absence. The situation worsens when both Thomas and Enrico separately inhale the vapor, and Thomas becomes increasingly violent. One day, Enrico reconnects with his friend Gianluca, from whom he had grown distant since Cristina’s death, and persuades him to skip school and turn to delinquency. He suggests playing a prank on a security guard with whom he had previously had a falling-out, but the guard has been infected by the vapor and reacts by killing Gianluca before taking his own life. Shaken, Enrico calls Thomas for comfort, but Thomas does not answer, and the boy hallucinates a brusque response from him. As a storm drives the spiral of violence in Rome to its peak, both Thomas and Enrico reach the final stage of the infection: they each hallucinate Cristina, who separately urges them to kill one another. The two clash, and Thomas is about to kill Enrico when Barbara intervenes, managing for the first time since the accident to stand briefly on her own legs. The vapor entity dissolves, freeing Thomas and Enrico. The reunited family goes out into the streets of Rome, where they see the survivors of the infection embracing one another, marking the end of the events.