Movie Review: The "Suspiria" Remake Casts a Spell and Spills Both Tea and Blood

**Luca Guadagnino changes the chemistry of Dario Argento’s classic horror, Suspiria. To quote Icona Pop, "I don’t care, I love it!"**

Director Luca Guadagnino follows up the touching, tactile Call Me by Your Name with a film similarly as sensorial, and as sensitive as an open wound (except this one’s more willing to show the bloody insides).

Set in 1977 Berlin, Suspiria centres on Dakota Johnson’s young American, Susie Bannion, who has left Ohio to join the Markos Dance Company. She’s mostly oblivious to the brewing cultural turmoil (culminating with a violent standoff by the far-left Red Army Faction, which provides the backdrop), but the dancer whose place she’s taking, Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), is accused of defecting for it. Patricia’s therapist, Dr. Klemperer (played by 'newcomer' Lutz Ebersdorf) last saw her in a panicked fit insisting the instructors at the Company were witches. Now she’s missing, and Susie’s teachers, including Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), are hungrily eyeing off the new recruit.

Suspiria isn’t coy about it. The coven behind the scenes of the Markos Dance Company is revealed almost immediately, except here, writer David Kajganich (of Guadagino and Swinton’s last collaboration, A Bigger Splash) digs deeper into the witchy admin, even featuring a leadership ballot. Spill!

At 152 minutes, this Suspiria adopts a more ponderous pace than Dario Argento’s 98-minute original from '77. The first death doesn’t come for quite a while, and for the longest time, instead of leaking Suspiria’s practically trademark beet-red blood, Guadagnino opts to have his characters expel tears, saliva, pus, urine and gastric juice instead. Eventually, in an ending that remakes the Suspiria legend completely, the blood comes, and then it doesn’t stop coming. Spill!

Purists may need to retire to their fainting couches, with Guadagnino having scandalised them by defiling their sacred Suspiria. While watching, I had my own concerns. (Argento's Suspiria is a 'Top 10' film for me, and as I reflected in my review of Halloween, I’m always hesitant to see beloved, nasty, rough-around-the-edges flicks turned into something respectable.) But as the full portrait of Guadagnino’s remake emerged, I surrendered to its spell. I was deeply moved and particularly tickled by his recontextualisation of 'witches' and what it means to be one, especially as a community of self-protecting women. Like the #MeToo-referencing Halloween, Suspiria goes the feminist route, calling out those who accuse women of suffering from delusions instead of listening and believing them.

It is also exceptionally, deliciously gross. Suspiria is undeniably a gnarly frightfest that never specifically mimics Argento’s gorgeous, gaudy original (save a few musical cues that recall Goblin’s original score and a late strobelit sequence), and finds new ways to be gorgeous and gaudy. Call Me by Your Name’s cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom returns, and again lets his lens linger on writhing bodies (in this, they're alternately in pleasure or pain).

Plus, in a no-brainer addition, Guadagnino’s Suspiria actually features dancing, choreographed by Damien Jalet, in which the performers are often a tangle of limbs, sometimes in yonic formations or draped in ropelike intestinal outfits. Feel free to use any of those words to describe the supernaturally-orchestrated murders that follow, by the way. The sound mix adds to the tangibility, bringing body-slaps and heaving breaths to the foreground. Thom Yorke’s dreamy score floats away, leaving only unnerving bodily functions in our ears.

Johnson blends into Guadagnino’s dreamworld too, and it's to Suspiria's advantage, for reasons we won’t get into. This is ultimately Tilda Swinton’s movie, and though some of the Swinton-related surprises have been ruined publicly, I’ll spare you in this review. However, if anyone threatens to steal the picture from the formidable Tilda, it’s Mia Goth, who is the most compelling and sympathetic character, as Susie and Patricia’s mutual friend, Sara. She’s sent on an investigative mission by Klemperer, to see if she can prove Patricia’s accusations and expose the Markos coven. Her screams, when they arrive, are the most desperate and bloodcurdling of the lot.

As another character screeches (hilariously, because it’s still a bit funny) in the finale, "It’s not vanity! It’s art!" Hell yeah. Suspiria isn’t just a brilliant and defining horror classic anymore. It’s two.

5/5

In Australian cinemas 8 November (with select Halloween screenings). Rated MA15+ for strong supernatural themes, violence, coarse language and nudity.