Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is a reimagining of Dario Argento’s 1977 cult favourite of the same name, which has become something of a touchstone for the horror genre. This “homage” to the original, to quote its director, while an interesting project in many ways, in unlikely to be remembered quite so fondly.
The film casts Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) as Susie Bannion, an American dance student who enlists in the Markos Dance Academy in West Berlin, in 1977, where all is very clearly not as it seems. It’s no spoiler to reveal that this dance school is presided over by a coven of witches; no spoiler because, unlike the Argento original, this film makes a conscious decision to reveal its hand early on.
That decision is a bold one, and one that I think ultimately pays off, because it allows Guadagnino to draw an eerie ‘everyday’ quality from the witches’ behaviour, which wasn’t possible in the original. It could be argued that this decision has reduced the element of mystery in the film, and thus the sense of tension, and while that may be true in one sense, it does also create a dramatic irony that makes us feel protective of the girls in the academy.
The film has much higher production values than its comparatively low-budget predecessor, and the standard of acting is also much stronger, which allows us to build stronger connections with its characters. Tilda Swinton is a favourite of Guadagnino’s (indeed, this is the third project they have worked on together) and is the film’s strongest asset as Madame Blanc, the girls’ domineering but much-loved tutor. The visuals are well done, with some nice nods to the original’s crash zooms and tracking shots, although don’t expect the film to be as vibrantly odd as Argento’s film, which was more abstract in its visual landscape. This film’s comparatively reserved visual palette is a tease, however, and is offset by its strongest individual sequence: a very well-staged denouement in which director and actors get to cut loose in sufficiently creepy fashion.
There are plenty of elements to like about Suspiria (including Thom Yorke’s moody score, which is worth a mention) but the film’s primary weaknesses lie in its structure. Firstly, the film is overlong, saddled with contextual details, primarily political, that don’t feel like they need to be there. It’s understandable that the filmmakers might have wanted to give the film a thematic drive beyond its own plot, but the diversions into politics didn’t add anything for me beyond the creation of a convincing backdrop, and so felt like diversions. Secondly, there is a subplot involving an elderly psychotherapist that fails to gel. The character feels too much like a contrivance, appearing primarily to drive the plot, and delivering lines that frequently veer into exposition. At the same time, his own subplot is given too much weight. The film appears to want to draw an emotional hook from this story that never really materialises and so, like the background political details, begins to feel like a distraction.
While the film constructs its world convincingly and has several memorable set pieces – one, in particular, involving a dance sequence of supernatural force – its structural weaknesses prevent it from establishing a consisten t sense of tension. That said, it’s by no means a bad film and certainly has power when it finds its focus; the final sequence is a case in point, and will certainly stick with me.