Suspiria

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, and Mia Goth    

Director: Luca Guadagnino    

153 minutes (18) 2018

Mubi Blu-ray region B

[Released 7th October]

Rating: 9/10

Review by Christopher Geary

A lavish remake of and homage to Dario Argento’s classic horror from 1977, this lengthy drama is set in the 1970s, pointedly evoking that era of Argento’s early work. Taking its inspiration from Argento’s trilogy of movies about a coven of powerful witches known as ‘Three Mothers’ - the superior Inferno (1980) followed the original Suspiria, while garish gore-fest Mother Of Tears (2007) attempted a belated finale - director Luca Guadagnino and his screen-writer David Kajganich have ably constructed a masterpiece of diabolically matriarchal terrors and absurdly extremist feminism.

This new version of Suspiria explores a compelling psycho-sexual and apocalyptic plot, with ambitious detailing and expression of its esoteric themes related to eldritch sorcery and grossly physical transformation. Suspicious but apparently unconnected events have profoundly bizarre links. A victim of supernatural ‘puppetry’ suffers grisly contortions that end with agonising death. Guadagnino winningly recreates the ominous atmospherics of Argento’s Suspiria, but his revisionist approach means its genre pitch and cinematic verve owes even deeper debts to Zulawski’s weird-SF shocker Possession (1981), where the spectre of impending social apocalypse and a tentacled manifestation of uneasily erotic disturbance was specifically coupled to Cold War anxieties.

Frankly, this is a far superior genre production to any of the horror movies, such as Giallo (2009), and Dracula 3D (2012), that Argento has made recently. His last good effort was Sleepless (2001), and his last great movie was probably The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). Guadagnino’s Suspiria is well composed as a stupendously grotesque shocker even if, or especially when, it is considered as a remake.

Set in the divided city of Berlin, the six ‘acts’ of Guadagnino’s Suspiria begin with distraught student Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz) visiting elderly shrink, Dr Klemperer, before she is reported to have disappeared. Arriving from the USA, nervous and wholly alienated Susie (Dakota Johnson) joins the Markos dance company, where she meets Sara (Mia Goth), considered a good ‘ambassador’ for the busy troupe. Rehearsals by the dancers for their Volk show continue, directed by Miss Blanc (one of three roles played brilliantly by Tilda Swinton), despite an emotional meltdown where Patricia’s troubled stand-in Olga denounces the women’s group as a “box of rabies”.

Fleeing the studio, poor tearful Olga is attacked by invisible forces and she’s broken like a rag-doll in a disturbing sequence of brutality that foreshadows ghastly abuses in the climactic scenes. Here, words and gestures by the Markos matrons - including Renee Soutendijk as Miss Huller - combine with surrealistic montages in dreams of agonising punishments, clearly signifying a gathering of overwhelming terrors hidden from view in reality, but not from second-sight. Shadows of Nazi atrocities linger, as if to prepare for a destiny of unwelcome return, as the practiced rhythm of jumping dancers echo like the approaching noisy menace of marching boots, as Blanc instructs Susie in the particulars of performing arts, with obvious pretensions about ‘poetry in motion’ striving to become darkly magical spells.

Architecture looms over people, hooks stab human flesh, and vague reflections mimic ghosts. Discovering the hidden rooms of a witchcraft archive, a dungeon of maddening screams with zombified victims unveils a devilish conspiracy for an impending explosive advent of hell on Earth, and Klemperer explains to baffled innocent Sara: “You can give someone your delusion... That’s religion. That was the Reich.” Radical choreography is presented as a clockwork battle-plan by the coven’s witches. Whispering by huddled dancers rises to a theatrical chant. A robotic performance of Volk rituals has the girls wearing rope outfits like severed puppet-strings, or bloody entrails. The movie’s haunting score from Thom Yorke (of Radiohead), reportedly drawing upon avant-garde Krautrock styles, adds many uncanny chills to already brooding visuals.

Telepathy and possession work together in this fusion of weird sci-fi and occult horrors. Jessica Harper, the star of Argento’s Suspiria, has a fine cameo role. Female supremacy is depicted as a psychic war of will-powers, although the witches in action still sometimes fall prey to cackling stereotypes, prone to humiliating men. Guadagnino’s Suspiria evokes a grisly biologic of death and inhuman immortality, with violent splatter effects outdoing the censor-baiting excesses of previous gothic horrors about witchcraft, including works by Mario Bava, Ken Russell, and Argento himself. This is a brand new classic of its type, with formidably terrifying images designed with compositional skills to withstand a batch of repeat viewings, probably necessary in order to fully appreciate the artistic filmmaker’s authentic genius.