Dance To The Gruesome & Thoughtful Rhythm of Suspiria

For his sixth narrative feature film directorial effort, Italian director Luca Guadagnino decides to go the horror remake angle by doing a new take on the seminal horror film Suspiria. Horror remakes don't have the best track record in the world but what Guadagnino has mad in his mad scientist lab is a totally off-the-wall creation that bears more in common stylistically with an Andrei Tarkovsky movie than one of those horror remakes Platinum Dunes was churning out in the mid-2000's. It's gory, it's slowly paced, it's an improvement over the original Suspiria, it's gonna alienate a lot of people who come to it expecting a routine horror film and it's also pretty darn exceptional.

In my review of the original Suspiria, I mentioned how my biggest grievance with the film was it felt more than a tad threadbare, there wasn't much going on thematically or in terms of scare beyond three excellent death scenes. The new version of Suspiria goes in the complete opposite direction and stuffs this its six-act story chock-full of details, allegories and different perspectives to tell its tale from. The setting has also been shifted over to West Berlin, Germany in 1977, a time when riots in the street were a common sight, hostage situations are a recurring fixture in the news and many civilians were taking up arms against the government by way of extreme methods. Within all this chaos, the Tanz Dance Academy goes on under the leadership of Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton).

In fact, the Academy has just gotten a new student in the form of Susie Bannon (Dakota Johnson). In perhaps the best upgrade from its predecessor, the new Suspiria greatly fleshes out the backstory of its protagonist. We quickly learn that Susie Bannon has come from a wretched home life and an abusive mother, meaning she's elated at the idea of moving to Germany full-time so that she may study dancing under the direction of Madame Blanc. Over time, Susie Bannon grows close to Blanc, whom she see's as the caring mother figure she never had, while at the same time both the audience and supporting character Dr. Josef Klemperer (portrayed by totally real doctor Lutz Ebersdorf)  learn that the teachers at this Academy are a coven of witches who have their own plans for the students, including Susie.

Suspiria is a movie that seems to have taken a cue from the internet term "Get you a man who can do both" in how it decides to be both gruesome horror movie and contemplative avant-garde human drama. Writer David Kajganich has decided to spit in the faces of those who told him this merger would be impossible and his attempts to create such a combination are mostly successful. I say mostly because there are times when the film feels like it's straining to be taken seriously with all of its various stereotypically "artistic" quirks like on-screen text to indicate transition between acts, a Thom Yorke score and a desaturated color palette. The main characters story and the haunting atmosphere are enough to make me invested in the compelling drama Suspiria, these extraneous thought widely harmless quirks just feel like extra distractions.

But at least even the occasional stumbles in trying too hard to act like a "serious" film show that an immense amount of effort is going into the movie, no one could ever fault Suspiria for a lack of trying, that's for darn sure! Plus, it does feel like Kajganich find several oppurtinities to just have fun in the macabre world he's created out of the framework set by the original Suspiria, like Dakota Johnson spying on some witches revelling in how they've got a pair of cops under their mind control or Tilda Swinton eating some chicken wings while chilling in a bathrobe. And then there's the absolutely insane and gore-soaked climax, which I think might have melted my brain a little bit and features a welcome appearence from the old lady who remembers when chocolate was first invented from SpongeBob SquarePants.

Amidst all the grim drama and nuttiness is the story of dual stories of Susie Bannon and Josef Klemperer, two human beings haunted by their past in differing ways. The past looms large over Suspiria, whether it's in the motivation for this pair of protaganists, how the witches are trying to incorporate traditional elements into their next ceremony or in the casting of the original Suspiria's lead actor, Jessica Harper, as one of this new movies witches. Suspiria gets a lot of fascinating drama out of watching people grapple with the past, particularly in the exquisitely edited dream sequences Susie Bannon keeps experiencing that rapidly flash between images of her past and unspeakable horrors that might await her in the future. Those dream sequences and the lingering atmosphere of dread that can't be shaken at the Tanz Academy are easily the scariest parts of Suspiria, the former element being especially good at sending one into a disorienting state while also shedding some light on what informs Susie as a character.

Scares are also generated in the numerous sequences of extreme body horror showing what kind of horrors that the witches are capable that seem like something out of a Saw sequel in their gruesome nature. This specific kind of torture-based horror isn't really my cup of tea personally in any movie, so I didn't find these scenes to be quite as effective as other horror-based sequences in Suspiria, but they are well-done in terms of the visual effects used to bring them to life and I'm sure they'll be catnip for fans of such horror (and more power to those fans!). Like the visual trickey used to execute (no pun intended!) the death scenes, the costumes in Suspiria are impressive, they're as much of a visual feast as the sets in the original movie, there are some truly outstanding outfits here that are guranteed to be Halloween costume fixtures in the years to come! 

Also impressing here is Tilda Swinton, whose endearingly quirky nature as a performer means she's a perfect fit for material that can be best described as "A gory thoughtful period-piece about dancing witches". Swinton excels in her multiple performances that allow her to go all over the map as an actor while her woefully undervalued ability to imbue subtle gravitas into her work also gets utilized to a great degree here. Meanwhile, Dakota Johnson does an intentionally more restrained performance in the lead role and does commendably well in the part, particularly in her subdued acting in the films final scene that has Bannon and Klemperer's stories collide in a fascinating way. Suspiria isn't a wholly perfect work, but just the way it's able to make these two people's stories intertwine so phenomenally well together in its epilogue shows the kind of remarkable depth that its capable of that makes it a beautifully crafted movie, one that's like if Eli Roth and Federico Fellini decided to work together on a project, worth remembering...if the witches will let you remember it, that is!