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Suspiria
***
Dir: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth
(Italy/USA, 18, 2hrs 32mins)
A remake of Dario Argento’s lurid blood-soaked horror from 1977 made by the man behind last year’s tender gay romance Call Me By Your Name? Yup. Director Guadagnino has long been a fan of the Italian schlock-meister genius Argento and his neon-red blood, inventive butcherings and madcap daftness, his gory giallo epics peppered with bursts of deeply disturbing imagery and hypnotically loony scores from electro-nutters Goblin.
Taking this template, Guadagnino has transformed the basic ‘dance school is a witches coven plot’ of the original and turned it into a cerebral arthouse movie, again with lashings of gore and unsettling imagery but also with plodding seriousness.
Dakota Johnson plays Susie, an apparent goody-two-shoes thrust into a West Berlin dance school in 1977. She is an expressive dancer, flinging her limbs about as if possessed under the watchful eye of Tilda Swinton’s matriarch leader. Johnson finds herself chosen both as lead dancer for an upcoming show and for some witchy stuff to boot, leading to a bonkers finale.
It’s off-kilter, reveling in its pretensions at times but still hypnotic. A supporting cast features Chloe Grace Moretz as a student who goes missing and Tilda Swinton again, masquerading as an 80-year-old man in makeup and with a fine German accent, a man investigating Moretz’s disappearance and with his own suspicions about the dance school.
Guadagnino’s Suspiria is more controlled and less hysterical than Argento’s original, but still has moments of disquiet; one scene features a dancer flung around a mirrored room in time to an unaware Johnson’s dance routine. The dance sequences themselves are uncomfortably erotic, building to a disturbing denouement that features Swinton in yet another role. It’s definitely not a mere remake of Argento’s bonkers operatic style fest – this is far more ruminative, often frustrating, while still managing to engage and be creepy. An arthouse horror, not for those who want a quick jump scare.
words Keiron Self