Suspiria

Horror doesn’t really suit Guadagnino, who takes a sterile and theatrical approach to mystery. He’s a master when it comes to psychology, but that’s not what his Suspiria is about. So, why is it watchable, other than for the acting performances of famous faces? Because it spurs curiosity about what has emerged from this strange, cold form of cinema with its historical roots in 1970s Germany and because of its unconventional portrayal of a clan of witches. Thanks, among other things, to the poetic slow-motion shots like something out of a romantic retro music video by Marika Gombitová, however, it turns out bad beyond all expectations. The witches’ mother, who looks like Jabba the Hut in fashionable sunglasses, is ridiculous. (03.04.2024)

Well, fuck me! This is something! Kajganich and Guadanino take the original, and relatively simple horror tale and stretch it to the left, right, up and down, and also turn it upside down, and the story about a poor student who realises that her ballet academy is run by a witch clan suddenly becomes a political and philosophical reflection on human histories that are portrayed as a carousel of power struggles driven by false gods and manipulative ideologies that “enchant” their followers. The main motif then is the abuse of power, which blends into several of the twists, and the setting in divided Berlin is not all that arbitrary. The guilt of the corrupted patriarchy versus female power, that’s another layer that’s explored thoroughly. It goes so far, that in the end, the only important male character who tries to be “good” bears the blame on several fronts. And we all know who plays that role… /// After the first viewing, without a Czech translation, I’m not entirely sure if all these motifs fit together completely, but I love digging into them. Formally, the new Suspiria is even better than I’d expected. The dance and dream sequences are absolutely brilliant, intensive, and the atmosphere is perfect. In the end, the ideas prevail over the horror (with all that thinking about what the hell is going on, there’s no time to be scared), which is a bit of a shame, but I’ll take it. For the moment 9/10, but I really want to watch it again – it might go up, or down. (15.01.2019)

Luca Guadagnino is undoubtedly a talented Italian director, but his previous work consisted mainly of romantic dramas, so to remake the famous Suspiria was a big task, but he managed to pull it off. Argento’s original was mesmerizing with its hauntingly eerie music, impressive visuals, elaborate murders and dense atmosphere. The remake goes in completely opposite directions and they don't have that much in common, and yet this journey has something going for it. It should be stated right off the bat that Suspiria is definitely not for mainstream audiences, frilly teenage girls, and people craving entertainment. The film will especially please Art fans of bizzare and obscure oddities and those who are addicted to 70s horror, as the new Suspiria seems to have fallen out of that era. Retro as fuck. It has it's flaws, but it also has distinct positives. The downside is the running time of two and a half hours, with more boring passages than there should be (why is German and English spoken in an Italian director’s film, I have no idea), but if you can get past that you'll get a well-deserved reward. Upside: the gorgeous Dakota Johnson finally shows up naked, Tilda Swinton is again excellent (though she looks so freaky that no normal guy would climb on her), all the dance scenes are interesting and the final number is solid – the gory dance scene is already iconic and I've never seen anything more gnarly and horrific. The disturbing dream visions are also amazing, and then there’s the finale, where absolute hell ensues with hectolitres of blood and exploding heads, Argento's red filter, and one heavily decomposing and moldy disgusting granny that will haunt my dreams for a long time to come. It's hard to rate the film because the horror scenes are great but the filler in between is a bit lame, yet the finale and the heartbreaking dance scene make it worth seeing. 70% (15.01.2019)

Cameraman Mukdeeprom does wonders; each one of his zoom-ins and accelerated close-ups has a chillingly aggressive impact and helps build up a foreboding feeling (in tandem with outstanding music). However, I have to mention the really chaotic editing, which is noticeable from the very first scene and is quite annoying (the director’s favourite editor Walter Fasano collaborated with Dario Argento on his awful flick Mother of Tears, so there’s that). Nevertheless, on the script side of things, Luca Guadagnino and David Kajganich try to expand the original film’s mythology to the historical-political context – which is, however, to the detriment of the horror atmosphere and tension. Baader-Meinhof, holocaust, Theresienstadt… Is it really what we needed and wanted to see about in the new Suspiria? Nearly the whole storyline around Dr. Klemperer – which eats up half of the total length – seemed overly artificial and superfluous. Not to mention that the doctor character implementation is incredibly kitsch and distracting for the viewer. On the other hand, I’m pleased with Tilda Swinton’s performance – she really grabs the whole film for herself. I’m quite confused with this flick’s approach as it was, to me, less interesting and surprising that what I had wished and expected. Maybe a second viewing in the future would prove more satisfying, but for now, I’m disappointed. [Sitges 2018] (05.10.2018)

Only a torso standing on its head remains from the original horror story about a student who reveals a dark conspiracy inside a dance school, unnecessarily supplemented by a second narrative line in which an 80-year-old German psychoanalyst investigates the disappearance of one of the dancers on his own and searches for his long-lost wife. The duality of the plot is also symbolized by the environment of Berlin divided into two parts in 1977 (when the original Suspiria was in cinemas), where the story was moved due to references to RAF terrorism and post-Nazi ideology. The result is confused and poorly edited video art, which permutes the motifs of the original film in its own way and thus differs significantly from the original, including its overall tone. The burnt out colored background of the school from Argent's version has been replaced by a boring gray, the visually impressive parts are just the sequences in which Guadagnino tries to shock the audience, and this time you won't even remember the music. The new Suspiria is a film about the awakening of femininity and female power, used to humiliate men and the fight for supremacy in a matriarchal community, in which the lead male character is played by a woman, and where dance equals sexual experience. However, the film is drowned in an unnecessarily stretched and slushy storytelling, in which gradually escalating tension and anxiety alternate with flashy and unconstructed brutality and straightforwardness, manifested in the fact that the film definitely does not try to hide who the dance school teachers really are and lays its cards on the table right from the beginning. (05.10.2018)

The complete opposite of the current trend in horror. A film that doesn't formally distinguish the conscious from the subconscious, the voices sound either whispered or from a distance, the walls talk and the mirrors watch. A horror film that starts with dying and ends with reconciliation. More viewings will be needed to give me a bit of perspective and some unraveling. So on the one hand, the whisperiness and unchanging pace of Suspiria was often distracting, which may have been enough to hide the fact that the film isn't very well edited and Dakota Johnson is still an acting lump. However, the new Suspiria is a film that is more expressive and better the day after viewing than during. And that's one of the essential yet rare qualities of a horror film. (06.05.2019)

Suspiria from Luca Guadagnino is a different film than Suspiria from Dario Argento. It is in fact a good film. Actually, I think it's a shame that the filmmakers tried to ride the coattails of the legendary film at all costs, because this new film deserves to stand on its own, to have its own story, not to be promoted as a remake. It's good enough to pull it off without this crutch, which kind of undermines the great legacy Argento has. (25.01.2019)