SUSPIRIA (2018) **

Director Luca (Call Me By Your Name) Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s iconic Suspiria is an odd duck.  It’s almost as if Guadagnino took a look at Argento’s film and did the exact opposite.  Gone is the original’s colorful look.  The color palette here is muted, mostly with a lot of drab browns and beiges.  Goblin’s searing, pulsating score has been replaced with Thom Yorke’s somber tones.  Argento’s bloody death sequences have been traded out for some relatively bloodless scenes (well, until the end that is).

Guadagnino’s approach is closer to a Roman Polanski psychological slow burn than Argento’s poppy, brightly colored waking nightmare.  I get that Guadagnino was trying to distance his picture from Argento’s so it could stand on its own.  It’s just that it’s so different that it makes you wonder why he didn’t just make his own movie unconnected to the original.  

The basic plot is the same.  Susie (Dakota Johnson) comes to a dance school and uncovers a plot by the secret society of witches that run the place.  Having Tilda Swinton playing the headmistress was a nice touch.  It’s just the theory is better than the execution.  I mean having Swinton playing multiple roles seemed like a sure bet.  Anyone who bets enough will tell you the house wins eventually.

There’s also a heavy emphasis on dancing, which is fine.  I guess.  Even though in doing so it makes the movie feel like a David Lynch remake of A Chorus Line.  There was no goddamn reason it needed to be over two and a half hours though.  I kept asking myself, “When is something going to happen?”  When it did, it was wild enough to keep me watching (and awake).  Mostly, it’s just a slog in between the good stuff.  Oh, and did we need the Epilogue that was nothing more than an Exposition Dump to stuff that really didn’t need to be explained in the first place?  

Another problem is the character of Susie.  There is nothing wrong with Johnson’s performance as she is only working with what she was given (which wasn’t much).  It’s that her sole focus is dancing, which makes her character wafer thin.  

I wanted to love Suspiria.   Although I love the original, I was receptive and open to a reimagining.  Guadagnino’s film just never clicked for me.  The slow burn is a bit too slow and the burn is more of a fleeting spark than a sustained ember.  The ending is a bit of a letdown too and isn’t scary in the least, unless you think the sight of old women’s boobs are immediately scary.