Suspiria (2018)

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Director: Luca Guadagnino

Screenplay: David Kajganich

Based on Suspiria by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi

Cast: Dakota Johnson as Susanna "Susie" Bannion; Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc, Lutz Ebersdorf as Dr. Josef Klemperer, Mia Goth as Sara Simms, Angela Winkler as Miss Tanner, Ingrid Caven as Miss Vendegast, Elena Fokina as Olga Ivanova, Sylvie Testud as Miss Griffith, Renée Soutendijk as Miss Huller, Christine LeBoutte as Miss Balfour, Małgosia Bela as Mrs. Bannion, Fabrizia Sacchi as Pavla, Jessica Harper as Anke Meier

Suspiria has been the subject of many planned remakes for a long time. Dario Argento captured lightning in a bottle, when taking a story from his then-wife Daria Nicolodi and, combined with Technicolor and fairy tale logic, created a true one-off in horror cinema. Even before we get to the remake that came to be, he'd follow it up with Inferno (1980), the film I've held as my personal favourite from the "Three Mothers" trilogy, and the unfortunate Mother of Tears (2007), which wasn't exactly the finale we hoped for. I'd be remised not to mention the unofficial third film, Luigi Cozzi's The Black Cat (1989), a lost work (as in trying to locate a pristine version) which cashed in on the films by making a film in the same lore, which befittingly was a cash-in made by the Italians themselves before anyone else could do.

The remake concept circled around David Gordon Green, an American director who began as a critical darling with dramas like George Washington (2000) before his curious journey into genre cinema from the late 2000s on; he'd never make his version, but did effectively remake Halloween H20 (1998) as Halloween (2018), trying to be the proper sequel to John Carpenter's 1978 film. There was talk of a Japanese animated version of Suspiria¹, which is befitting knowing Suspiria was insanely popular in the country; the choice of studio, Gonzo, might've been a bad choice as, whilst known for a lot of Western co-productions and glitz, the company who started properly in the medium in 2000s were notorious for work which dropped in quality halfway through, a CV barring some gems and loved shows full of critical failures, and would eventually leave the 2000s so economically crippled they're a shell of their former selves.

The person who finally got a Suspiria remake done was befittingly also Italian, another curious choice as it was filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who made his announcement of this plan at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. He beforehand was hailed for a string of world cinema dramas, including collaboration with muse Tilda Swinton, which doesn't scream out horror cinema in the slightest. It's the same as when Werner Herzog remake Nosferatu (1922) in the 1979 version, the German director not known for genre films wishing however to remake what he held as a masterpiece of his nation, not however without taking a hugely different tone though it followed the same narrative. Suspiria 2018 has the template, but is a very different animal.

Six acts (plus an epilogue), shot by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinematographer until Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, which means a man behind some of my favourite films is on staff, as if Thom Yorke of Radiohead, who was imposed with the impossible challenge of topping Goblin's one-of-a-kind score for the original. Guadagnino also decides to flesh out the premise. No longer has hyper-coloured, but a lush muted series of browns, blacked surfaces and natural reds make up this new world, and still set in Berlin. This version openly decides to reference the political turmoil of the era, set around the time that the Baader-Meinhof group, an extreme left wing group who terrorised West Germany in the seventies with bombings and crimes, eventually collapsed. Tapping into a moment when for this group, who were like rock stars in appearance, violently dissolved, in an era of extreme political chaos in countries like Italy and Japan around the world, this Suspiria in its two and a half hours is filtered through the tone of the real world of nothing being grounded and prone to destruction, even the witches coven of the original Suspiria now imagined as an actual community, seen even voting for their leaders, that can still collapse.

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Probably the oddest aspect though is that Guadagnino, in love with the original film, eventually embraces the lurid Italian schlock of gore to a surprise. He adds a greater weight of severity before this. The ballet school that is secretly a witches' coven is seen from their perspective from the get-go, with meetings and leadership votes, one which is had to survive the likes of World War II and Nazi rule as a matriarchal group but with the issues as a clan whose methods to keep themselves safe include murder will eventually be their downfall. Tilda Swinton, who has been with the director since his first film The Protagonists (1999), is the figure of Madame Blanc, whose work explicitly pulls from avant-garde dance history as a character who, when not being a witch, is trying to innovate new work in the medium. The 1977 Suspiria really didn't have any dancing to speak of, merely a setting to set-up the actual plot, but the 2018 film makes up for this and even manages to have a death by it, probably the most gruesome of them all with a relish Argento would love, wherein a figure is contorted from afar beyond recognition. That scene, the first of these in a very bloody film, is also a reminder that whilst Guadagnino is taking this very serious, he eventually is willing to step out of his usual type of cinema into the over-the-top luridness of his fellow countrymen.

He doesn't pull punches, bless him, and this is where the 2018 Suspiria really won even a person like me, suspicious of this entire premise before seeing the film, because Guadagnino as an outsider to horror in his career doesn't play safe and can bring an entirely different perspective that offers fresh territory. He goes for the gore and grotesquery, the weird nightmare sequences and even a nude demonic dance ritual in the ending, all whilst fleshing out a world of his own from the initial premise. That the witches have a power struggle, bitterness felt with the fact that despite their goals as much being a feminist one, who survived through the Nazi patriarchy, they're devolving into violence and arguing that is as more likely to rid them of students as it is going to harm them. And Susie Bannion this time, our American protagonist now played by Dakota Johnson, is a curious figure with a deeply religious background she fled from, almost turn of the century when we cut to her mother's death bed through the film as it's an Amish background, one less like Jessica Harper's curious fairy tale figure of the first film but a more focused, determined one.

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Since we're not holding back on spoilers, she's actually the real Mother of Sighs, Guadagnino still retaining the mythology Argento built up of the "Three Mothers", three great witches of terror and fear inspired from Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis, turning this film into a kind of twist that I'd find in one of the Italian films of movies from a Luigi Cozzi or Umberto Lenzi, with added mass implosion of heads for good measure. It's a pinch of salt whether each viewer will like this, alongside all the other details throughout, but I have softened to it as it comes from a director whose love for the original film clearly spurred him to want to do something very different, and decided to my glee to embrace the kind of lurid pulp of directors I have mentioned, far from dismissing, I have always loved even though they can be ridiculous. He also finds a way for Jessica Harper herself to make a cameo which brought the hairs up on the back of my neck, a real of sign of tribute and actually beautiful in that it's for plot importance to.

[Major Spoilers End]

In one of his other curious choices, whilst it would've been nice to have Udo Kier return to have an abrupt exposition scene, we have Tilda Swinton in two roles, between Blanc and also an elderly male psychologist Dr. Josef Klemperer, whose investment in the ballet school's underbelly stems from the loss of his wife in their youth during WWII. Suspiria 2018 is long enough this character has his own back-story and conclusion, a journey where he'll eventually learn the truth of her, which is actually a sad scene even if tonally it might seem odd as an epilogue after the gory madness that transpires, something that strangely is reminiscent of Brian Yuzna's Faust: Love of the Damned (2000) but significantly better produced. You can tell its Swinton under heavy makeup effects in her voice, even if the prospthetic effects team behind the disguise deserve an honorary award in achievement; when the choice was made I don't know, buts its definitely a fascinating choice to a film that is rife in idiosyncratic choices, and Swinton is good in both roles. I mentioned "muse" before, as she has been in a few of his films, and it's fascinating to know that once, before she was ever a cultural intitution by herself, Swinton was a muse for Derek Jarman, as unique a British filmmaker you could get. Her career has never ebbed, never become predictable, as who can claim to have a Bela Tarr film and a Marvel Studios role under her belt aside from her?

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In terms of point, the original Suspiria was a fever dream, an intense haze nightmare where everything onscreen is symbolically kicked off when Jessica Harper exits automatic doors out into Berlin from the beginning. Suspiria 2018 is a reflection on its existence, very much a dialogue to its older self, but you can see it as a new direction with the same material that can exist by itself, really what a remake should do. Envisioning this film, still set in the late seventies, with lieu to real life politics, it images that witches would have to go through the real world as Germany itself did. The references aren't pointless, as the likes of the Baader-Meinhof group existed because ex-Nazis were still getting in important seats in Germany, not to mention (whilst less references) this is a fractured country, where Berlin itself in the middle of East Germany was a curious entity part of West Germany but geographically was an island surrounded by Soviet occupied land. An irony is not lost either in that, as the Baader-Meinhof group should have been seen as a heroic group, but were just violent and completely indefensible because their ideals were twisted into death, the ballet school's ideals are corrupted by their need to kill and silence.

Even the ballet is now like an incantation each time it's seen, vibrant and (literally) violent in how the female bodies distort and move. When Blanc says it can no longer be beautiful but reflect the world, it's a literal glance of the political world referred to. The failure of the Baader-Meinhof gang itself can even be parallel to the failure of this coven, which has now devolved into "removing" patrons (i.e. leave limbless ballet students like husks in the basements) and their splitting sides like how eventually, when the Baader-Meinhof group leaders eventually committed suicide in prison, their flanks split into significantly weaker pockets.

That this is still a horror film is the really curious thing. Arguably, it belongs to this controversial idea of "elevated horror", a term used for films like The Witch (2015) which is a catch term that can dangerously denote films for people who don't want to be embarrassed into admitting to liking horror films. This Suspiria however is still, for its high-mindedness, still full of things that'd be found in Italian b-movies of the eighties, which is a fascinating curiosity I have to admire. I have to admire, in general, the balls Guadagnino had with the project in general. Remakes have always had a stigma to them, something I attest to as I once embarrassingly tried to put a petition together to stop the American remake of Let the Right One In (2008) before even seeing to the Swedish version, a folly of dumb youth. A lot of the issue, admittedly, was the 2000s-early 2010s I'd argue when remake usually meant lazily putting together the films of yore in the same ways but less well. A little difference goes a long way - even flair, as whilst no way near as good, Gore Verbinski could make a 2002 version of the 1998 Ring film that was his own² - but fully embracing a new tone is something to admire.

Yes, Thom Yorke can't top the Goblin score, but Goblin's score is still one of the best ever created, and they had to hire the lead singer of Radiohead to even attempt the challenge, creating a droning and eerie piece of art in itself. Yes, the cinematography of the original is still spellbinder, but hiring the man who shot Uncle Boonmee, a Thai cinematographer of dreamlike imagery, is an inspired choice as, alien to the territory and time period, he creates something both oppressive yet strangely luxurious. The production and design staff were clearly given carte blanche to work, and whoever was hired to be the dance choreographer embraced their inner Pina Bausch in terms of ritualistic bacchanal rites. So yes, it's a film that has understandably been divisive, but my God, Luca Guadagnino gave it a shot and I have to applaud that.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Nightmarish

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) Reference HERE 

2) Plus South Korea remade the film in 1999 with The Ring: Virus, so let's not kid ourselves in the proliferation of remakes being inevitable and a global language.