Suspiria (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆

Suspiria (2018) – L. Guadagnino

The best way to approach Luca Guadagnino’s “remake” of Dario Argento’s classic supernatural giallo horror is to treat it as a different film.  Sure, the characters and the setting are the same:  Suzy Bannion (Dakota Johnson) from the US travels to Europe to join an elite dance troupe led by Tilda Swinton where there may be a coven of witches who are responsible for some girls dying or disappearing.  But whereas Argento treats this situation in an imaginative stylized brightly coloured art-directed-to-hell manner (abounding with gruesome setpieces), Guadagnino attempts to build tension and mystery slowly and steadily.  In fact, he chooses to extend Argento’s tight 98 mintues to six acts and an epilogue equalling 152 minutes.  This has the effect of making everything in the early film feel more literal and concrete, rather than more impressionistic.  In addition, an extra plot thread to focus on the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group, a West German far-left militant organization, and their current terrorist activities, as well as an older therapist who lost his wife in the concentration camps of WWII (played by who?) adds layers to the plot that might not be necessary. But in keeping with the horror focus, Guadagnino eventually goes all Grand Guignol on us in a pretty incredible set-piece that is as bizarre as Argento but perhaps too little too late for a film of this length.  Surrealistic dreams and violent dance sequences pepper the first few acts but aren’t enough to overcome the tedium that the bloated length produces.  Yet as a different film, not Suspiria, Guadagnino’s work may be weird enough to develop a cult following.