‘Suspiria’ Flirts With Brilliance Before Going Off The Rails

No classic horror movie is safe from being remade. Just since the turn of the century, fans have gotten reboots of seemingly untouchable classics like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13^th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all with varying degrees of effectiveness. The latest episode of “Is Nothing Sacred In The Horror World?” stars Suspiria.

Suspiria is about a young American dancer named Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson from Bad Times at the El Royale) who travels to West Berlin with hopes of earning a place at the world famous Markos Dance Academy. Head Choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton from Only Lovers Left Alive) is impressed enough with Susie’s raw ability to offer her a spot with the company, and the dancer quickly rises through the ranks and becomes a lead performer for the troupe.

Meanwhile, a psychiatrist named Dr. Joseph Klemper (also Swinton, although billed as Lutz Ebersdorf) begins snooping around the dance school after talking with a paranoid patient named Patricia (If I Stay’s Chloë Grace Moretz) who fled the academy. Klemper stumbles upon a dark secret involving witches on the company’s governing board, led by their enigmatic founder Helena Markos (Swinton again – she’s all over this movie). The board has nefarious plans for Susie, and Dr. Klemper’s efforts to save the young woman puts everyone in danger.

The original Suspiria was directed in 1977 by horror maestro Dario Argento (the first of his Three Mothers trilogy which also includes 1980’s Inferno and 1007’s The Mother of Tears), while this one was made by art filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash, Call Me By Your Name). The basic story skeleton is similar (Argento and Daria Nicolodi even get screenwriting credits) and both versions are filled with striking imagery, but the movies are still wildly different.

The script for this updated version, written by David Kajganich (True Story, Blood Creek), is heavier on exposition and analogy than Argento’s original. The setting of the film is shifted from seventies Munich to Berlin which was, at the time, still separated into post-WWII sections, with the city itself inside the Soviet-occupied section of the country. This lends itself to some Holocaust survivor drama that, frankly, isn’t entirely effective in its execution, but does provide one of the coolest “ah-ha!” moments for fans of the original film. The padded narrative also allows Guadagnino and Kajganich to explain the Three Mothers concept better than Argento ever did.

On the flip side, the extrapolated backstory increases Suspiria’s running time by an hour over its predecessor, which can get tedious at times, particularly during its seemingly never-ending final act. That’s where the movie really loses steam; the first two hours are absolutely brilliant, but the film doesn’t quite stick the landing. The last half hour or so is an excruciating exercise in Cronenbergian slime and viscera. Some fans will love it and see it as a final catharsis, but others – like me – will feel it’s a cop-out ending to an otherwise amazing movie. Either way, like it or not, both sides will have to admit that Suspiria goes off the rails by the end.

So, how does one recreate a legendary movie? Guadagnino’s answer is to not even try. And he’s right. Suspiria lacks the primary colored, comic book panel aesthetic of Argento’s film, opting for a more subdued and muted look that is packed with dizzying camera movements and creepy Luis Buñuel imagery. It’s a completely different movie than Argento’s, and for that, we should all be thankful. Because now, we’ve got two very good – and very different – Suspiria movies. And nothing about the new one is going to change anything about the old.