‘Suspiria’ (2018) review — Upsetting, diabolical, and better than the original

Suspiria, a remake of the 1977 classic, gets an upgrade in plot and horror.

30-second review: Suspiria doesn’t feel at all tamped down by the 1977 original Dario Argento film. If anything, it feels more like it is inspired by it rather than remaking it. However, that’s what director Luca Guadagnino—his last film was the Oscar-winning Call Me By Your Name—intended when tackling the project.

And while his last film was a quiet tender romance, Suspiria is anything but. It’s dark, tense, and oozes of evil. It replaces the neon-splashed open halls of Argento’s film with dark shadowy corridors that feel like they’re constantly closing in.

Where the original had a paper-thin plot that nearly derails the whole movie, the updated version uses the same premise, but does away with having the mystery of the dance as the main plot driver and replaces it with something more story-focused. 

Where to watch Suspiria: Streaming on Prime Video.

Full review below ?

However, we still begin with Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson hot off her performance in Bad Times at the El Royale), a somewhat naive American girl chasing her childhood dream of being a dancer with a prestigious German dance academy. Unbeknownst to Susie, though, the entire staff of women is actually a coven of witches—don’t worry, this version of the film establishes this almost immediately.

Susie quickly catches the eye of lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) who is taken with her natural talent and seems to have insidious intentions for the young pupil. When Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), the lead of the piece the company is working on, goes missing—assumed to have joined a guerrilla group during the “German Autumn” rebellion—Susie volunteers to fill the role.

Another student and friend of Patricia, Olga (Elena Fokina), is horrified that none of the women who run the dance academy or students seem to think there’s more to Patricia’s disappearance and lashes out at Blanc before storming out. However, before she is able to leave the building, she suddenly finds herself trapped in a room completely covered by mirrors.

Before giving her the part—one that Susie knows well from watching the company perform in New York—Madame Blanc wants to see her perform it without music. What follows is one of the most disturbing horror setpieces I’ve seen in years—save for a couple in this year’s Hereditary—as Olga still trapped in the mirrored room is contorted and torn apart from the inside out with every move that Susie takes until she is twisted and crunched together into a mess of limbs.

It’s upsetting, sadistic, but oddly beautiful.

All the while, Patricia’s psychotherapist Dr. Josef Klemperer (also Tilda Swinton in terrific old-age makeup) is investigating what really happened to Patricia, whose rantings in her journal show that she knew about the coven and a powerful trio of witches called The Three Mothers whom the coven worship.

Like any good horror movie, Guadagnino uses sound, frenetic editing, and his Call Me By Your Name collaborator Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s atmospheric cinematography to create tension.

As the company’s performance quickly approaches, Susie’s friend and fellow dancer Sara begins to have suspicions similar to Patricia and eventually connects with Dr. Klemperer to help validate them.

Sara becomes a much-needed center to the story since Susie becomes consumed by the performance and work and ultimately disconnected from the story, similarly to the original. If there’s any pinpoint-able problem with Suspiria it’s that there’s not really an emotional protagonist and Swinton, as talented as she is, has trouble translating emotion as Dr. Klemperer—she’s fantastic as Madame Blanc.

David Kajganich’s screenplay has to be given credit for at least adding some texture to most of the characters and story and adding some much-needed background before the story, but the lack of focus on a particular story strain becomes a detriment. 

However, when you see the ending—and I highly recommend you watch the movie unspoiled for this very reason—it all ties together and the movie becomes better because of it. Like all the horror in the movie, it’s creepy and unsettling but realized with a flair that only an auteur like Guadagnino could pull off. 

Suspiria‘s horror set-pieces are reason enough to tackle the over-stuffed runtime and it ultimately is better—and more diabolical—than the original.