Suspiria

The complete opposite of the current trend in horror. A film that doesn't formally distinguish the conscious from the subconscious, the voices sound either whispered or from a distance, the walls talk and the mirrors watch. A horror film that starts with dying and ends with reconciliation. More viewings will be needed to give me a bit of perspective and some unraveling. So on the one hand, the whisperiness and unchanging pace of Suspiria was often distracting, which may have been enough to hide the fact that the film isn't very well edited and Dakota Johnson is still an acting lump. However, the new Suspiria is a film that is more expressive and better the day after viewing than during. And that's one of the essential yet rare qualities of a horror film. (2019-05-06)

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. (2024-04-02)

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. (2019-01-15)

With the original Suspiria, it has practically nothing in common. It was enough to slightly revamp the premise with three mothers - which is equally alternative here - and change the setting to a dance school, and it could have been a self-sufficient film that didn't have to be wrapped in the cloak of a remake of a horror classic from the 70s. I was looking forward to a more artistic approach, but it never occurred to me that it would turn into a heartbreaking holocaust love story with witches. I appreciate only some individual moments and occasionally disturbing atmosphere of the new Suspiria - but it's all so inconsistent that even if something caught my interest, it was immediately shattered by something tedious or uninteresting. I don't like to criticize movies for their length, but there are so many unnecessary and meaningless scenes here, that the excessive running time is completely unforgivable. Unfortunately, Guadagnino doesn't really work with a gradual build-up of atmosphere and mystery - the school loses its air of mystery very quickly - and the film doesn't even have a proper storyline. In the end, it feels to me like an experimental feminist pretentiousness that exploited the good name of Suspiria for its own purposes. The taste in my mouth after this experience probably won't go away anytime soon, and I'm starting to regret that David Gordon Green, who was originally circling around the project before Guadagnino and Kajganich got it and created this travesty, didn't make the remake of Suspiria instead. (2018-10-04)

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. (2019-01-25)