"Suspiria” 2018 Review
Luca Guadagnino's "Suspiria" 2018 is a reinterpretation of the Dario Argento 1977 classic. It's darker, grittier, longer, and meaner and it adds a lot to the original premise. Gone is the nightmarish neon lighting and extravagant art direction but what we have instead is a grey, bleak, disgusting looking film that manages to make other horror movies feel like happy-puppy-frolic-times.
We follow Susie (Dakota Johnson) who joins a shady-ass dance academy in Berlin. There's a lot of witch stuff that's going on (btw, you know there're witches, right? Spoilers?). She befriends a girl named Sara (Mia Goth) and there's some crazy dancing and more witch stuff. It's awesome. That's the majority of the film. The other part, which doesn't quite connect with me is the story about an old man investigating the disappearance of one of the girls from the academy. Thematically it makes a lot of sense and the pieces didn't fit for me until hours after the viewing. More on that later.
Huge props go to Damien Jalet's intense, bone-snapping contemporary/expressionist dance choreography with Elena Fokina being a standout in what is probably the most upsetting dance sequence ever put on film. It's also worth noting the Johnson and Goth both do their own dancing and the rest of the dancers on screen are hypnotic to watch in the best possible way. And it's all further enhanced by Walter Fasano's percussive editing and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's old school 70's era camera work. Mix in some crunchy sound design and a dark ambient/neo-psychedelic score by Thom Yorke and we have ourselves a cool fucking movie.
I didn't think I would like Dakota Johnson when I saw 50 Shades (the first one) and that movie where she's single or whatever. But having seen her in Bad Times at the El Royale and Suspiria, it got me very excited for whatever she does next. Another standout is Mia Goth's super likable Sara. I liked her a lot in "Nymphomaniac" and she was one of the only parts of "A Cure for Wellness" that I liked and she rocks in Suspiria. Of course, something has to be said about Tilda Swinton's performance as three very different characters. It's incredible and Swinton brings a lot of gravitas and empathy to a role like Madame Blanc (one of the dance teachers at the academy) and Dr. Josef Klemperer (which makes those scenes easier to digest).
As much as I love this film, I personally felt lost in a lot of the political context that the film is set in. If only I knew that it was gonna take place in the 1970's in Berlin and deals with vergangenheitsbewältigung, Lufthansa Flight 181, and the RAF terrorist acts, I would've went into it with a better understanding but I suck at history and that's totally shitty on my part. The Dr. Klemperer plot won't make much sense until the very end but watching the set up often felt tedious and less captivating than the stuff that was happening at the dance academy. There's also another woman, played by Małgosia Bela (also playing more than one role) on a bed somewhere far from what's immediately happening and she's awkwardly written into the story and that didn't click for me until I read the Wikipedia article for the movie. That being said, I would totally sit down and watch this again with better context and I totally see myself loving it even more.
Suspiria 2018 is gonna be polarizing. It's a very dense movie and some elements aren't gonna work as well as other parts of the movie. But the parts that do work are enthralling, traumatic, hypnotic, and grotesquely stunning. Don't expect a straightforward retelling of the original.
PS, I guess I should put it out there that I love witches and Radiohead and this film has both of those things. So yay!