I admit, when I originally heard that they were doing a remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria, one of my favourite films of all time, my reaction was a little like Donald Sutherland's at the end of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers - ie. I might have pointed and screamed inhumanly. But what sort of internet review would I be if I didn't at least give the remake a fair shot, so after waiting for far too long to actually get hold of a copy (because guess what never got a cinema release within 50 miles of me), here is my review of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria.
Berlin, 1977. American Susie Bannion has travelled from her Amish/Mennonite community to West Berlin, to audition at the world-famous Helena Markos Dance Company. Although they are initially sceptical, Susie's raw talent and passion win the instructors there over - particularly Madame Blanc, the academy's director. Blanc quickly takes Susie under her wing and begins grooming her for a protagonist role in an upcoming performance the academy is putting on. Sinister things are going on behind the scenes, however, as the academy's instructors are actually a coven of witches who are planning to transfer the essence of their leader, Helena Markos, into an unwitting Susie's body...
The Carnography Rule of Remakes goes a little something like this: A remake can only be considered necessary or "valid" if either enough time has passed that technology and/or special effects have advanced enough that they would make a significant difference to the film; there is sufficient interest from a new generation; or there is a new direction or theme that the film can be taken in. In the case of this Suspiria remake, it's the latter category that applies, as where Argento's original version was bathed in vibrant reds, blues and greens and felt very much like a dark fairy tale, Guadagnino's 2018 version is a much more grounded affair, taking place in divided Berlin during a time of great political turmoil and having a considerably more muted colour palette to both go with the time period and to be a background counter to the supernatural goings-on behind the scenes of the Academy.
If I'm being honest, this washed-out, muted and considerably more down-to-earth setting didn't really grab me at first when I watched this new version of Suspiria. Sure, dramatic licence and prior knowledge assured me that something sinister was going on at the Markos Dance Company, but the movie seemed to be in no real hurry to get to any of that. I just wasn't being drawn into the film in the same way I had been with the original, that had lead me to breathlessly describe scenes to a friend (who didn't get my excitement, sadly) the following day after seeing it. And then came the scene where Susie unknowingly becomes a human voodoo doll - as she dances passionately, almost frantically under Madame Blanc's instruction/thrall, the body of another dancer trying to leave the academy, elsewhere in the building, is forced to twist, contort and eventually break, in perfect yet horrific synchronicity with Susie's movements. This scene instantly made me sit up and start paying proper attention and let me know that this remake was indeed worth watching.
Now, there were still parts of the film that I didn't particularly enjoy. The climax involved more CGI blood than I would have liked (always a disappointment), and I personally thought that the whole subplot with the elderly psychotherapist was given rather too much screentime and didn't really add anything to the primary narrative (also, I could tell it was Tilda Swinton in prosthetics the moment I first saw the character, and I'm pretty certain that this would have been the case even if I hadn't already known that she played this role as well. I think it was the eyes that gave it away. Although fair play to Swinton for doing it, prosthetic penis and all). I also managed to watch a version that didn't have subtitles for the German portions of the script, and as most of my German comes from watching episodes of The A-Team in German in my teenage years, I can't help but wonder if I missed anything there. But these things were balanced out by the intensity of the dancing and everything leading to the film's bloody and surprising climax.
Motherhood is, of course, a key theme running through this Suspiria - although not always in the ways you might expect, especially at the end. Although I was also reminded a little of The Neon Demon in the way Susie comes to the Academy from nothing, and quickly catches people's attention and rises to a coveted position while seeming both innocent and slightly sinister at the same time. Themes of corruption and abuses of power also run through the film, with the goings-on at the Markos Dance Company being mirrored in the divided Berlin, and the terrorism of the Red Army Faction that goes on in the background (and not the Royal Air Force, which confused me for a bit because that's what I'm used to RAF standing for).
In the end, I enjoyed this new version of Suspiria and I'm glad I saw it. It took the story and concept of a dance school run by witches and went in a very different direction than Argento did with the original, and for the most part, it worked. Not 100%, alas, but more than enough worked to make this remake stand out on its own merits without the need to endlessly compare it with the original.
4 out of 5.