Review: Suspiria (2018)

Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson
Written by: David Kajganich
Music by: Thom Yorke
Country: Italy, United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
IMDb

After 2 years, I finally got around to watching Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of Suspiria. I kept putting it off because I never seemed to be in the mood for 3 hours of arthouse horror. I'll start off by saying I'm no big Argento fan, including his 1977 original. I love Goblin's music and some of the visual choices, but that's about it. But I liked the remake quite a bit. The remake is much more muted, bleak, and gorier than Argento’s and I think it’s much more unsettling as a result. It has way more interesting things to say about feminine power and the bloody pursuit of it. Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson are both very good, though Swinton’s attempt at also playing the elderly male therapist was kind of distracting. Goblin’s score for the original movie an all-timer as a standalone work of music, but Thom Yorke’s turn here is very admirable and actually works better in context than Goblin’s does, really enhancing the ominous mood. The setting in winter in 1970s Germany really amps up the chilliness, as well. Initially, I felt like it was too long. But after a second viewing, I'm not sure what could possibly be cut. The film is incorporating so many different ideas that are playing together that it would be difficult to disentangle them. This is one of the most layered and thematically rich horror movies I can remember. It's a beautiful discussion of power and its abuse, gender politics, fascism, the power of responsibility and empathy, the role of art in discovering self, the bonds of sisterhood and motherhood, etc. If I had to get down to nitpicking like a snob, the blurred/slow motion used during the climax didn’t really work for me and I would have preferred that Swinton not have been stunt-casted. This was a fantastic movie, though, so … ignore those nitpicks.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10