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. (04/02/2024)

This new Suspiria barely relates to the original. If they'd just tweaked the premise about the three mothers — which is pretty loose here anyway — and set it outside a dance school, it could've stood alone without wrapping itself in the cloak of a 70s horror classic. I was looking forward to a more artsy take, but I never expected it to turn into a heart-wrenching Holocaust love story with witches. I appreciate some moments and the occasionally unsettling atmosphere, but the film is so inconsistent that any interesting parts are quickly overshadowed by tedious or dull scenes. I'm not one to criticize a film's length, but there are so many unnecessary and meaningless scenes that the excessive runtime becomes unforgivable. Guadagnino fails to build up the atmosphere and mystery gradually — the school loses its aura of secrecy too soon, and the film lacks a solid narrative structure. In the end, it feels like an experimental feminist ego trip that misuses Suspiria's good name. The bad taste this left will linger for a while, and I can't help but wish David Gordon Green, who was initially involved before Guadagnino and Kajganich took over, had directed the remake instead. (10/04/2018)

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. (10/05/2018)

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. (01/25/2019)

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. (01/15/2019)