Rent Suspiria (2018)
2.8 of 5 from 310 ratings
2h 26min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the troupe's artistic director (Tilda Swinton), an ambitious young dancer (Dakota Johnson), and a grieving psychotherapist (Lutz Ebersdorf). Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.
- Actors:
- Chloë Grace Moretz, Tilda Swinton, Doris Hick, Malgorzata Bela, Dakota Johnson, Angela Winkler, Vanda Capriolo, Alek Wek, Jessica Batut, Elena Fokina, Mia Goth, Clémentine Houdart, Ingrid Caven, Sylvie Testud, Fabrizia Sacchi, Brigitte Cuvelier, Renée Soutendijk, Christine Leboutte, Vincenza Modica, Marjolaine Uscotti
- Directors:
- Luca Guadagnino
- Producers:
- Bradley J. Fischer, Luca Guadagnino, David Kajganich, Francesco Melzi d'Eril, Marco Morabito, Gabriele Moratti, William Sherak, Silvia Venturini Fendi
- Writers:
- Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, David Kajganich
- Studio:
- Mubi
- Genres:
- Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers
- Collections:
- Getting to Know: Tilda Swinton
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 07/10/2019
- Run Time:
- 152 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, German DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, German DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.85:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Making Of Featurette
- Secret Language of Dance
- Transformations of 'Suspiria'
- The Look Featurette
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Reviews (9) of Suspiria
Ambitious but ultimately inferior remake - Suspiria review by LC
Fair play to this film for its artistic ambition and willingness to set out on its own path, but ultimately this remake just doesn't come close to the power of Argento's original classic. The garish 70's colours and soundtrack of the original have been deliberately inverted, so this time round everything feels bleak, muted and wintery. The first three quarters of the film, with the menace at the heart of the dance school being slowly uncovered are reasonably effective - slow, but with a certain hypnotic charm. Unfortunately the explicit horror climax (complete with rubber monster prosthetics and CGI gore) is a complete mess, and derails much of the tone of what went before. The film is stuffed with allusions to contemporary political events but doesn't seem to quite know what to do with them, whilst the constant intrusion of the story of an old man (played by Tilda Swinton under layers of prosthetics, for some unknown reason) and his long-lost wartime love keeps derailing the focus from the main heroine. Ultimately, this feels both overstuffed and unfocused - some rigorous editing and hacking down the 2.5 hour running time might have resulted in a tighter and more coherent film. Sometimes less really is more.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Watchable but totally strange - Suspiria review by TH
Not sure what to make of this film. It's very strange. The acting is not too bad and the story is interesting. I came away from this film wondering what I had just watched. It's quite disturbing in places and doesnt always feel like it makes complete sense. Worth a watch but maybe wont come back to this.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Inferior remake - Suspiria review by WB
The original version of this film is an Italian horror film from the 1970's which you will either love or hate. This new version adds quite a bit but does not really contribute anything more. Tilda Swinton pops up bizarrely in a redundant sub plot as a German psychiatrist grieving over the loss of his wife during the war and it refers to the political events going on in German in the 1970's. IT is more than two and half hours long and really drags. Weird not wonderful
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Suspiria review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
What a marvelous age to live in where horror classics can have a new life with a throwback feel, true to its source. Not long after the faithful sequel of David Gordon Green’s Halloween, along comes Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remains just as faithful in its own artistic, twisted, and confounding means of horror akin to Dario Argento’s original film. A lesser film would compromise and pull back to make the film faster, simpler, and dial back the gore. If anything, Guadagnino only ramps up the film’s awkwardness that dares to be nothing short of an unsettling and grotesque experience, so beautifully fulfilling for it bloody avant-garde nature.
The story takes place in 1977 Berlin, where a dance academy for girls acts secretly as a coven of witches. From the outside and from their dance floors, they appear to be just another strict dance school, led by the focused and shrill Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). But beneath their halls, hidden behind mirrored rooms and dark dungeons, is a sinister motive the remains ever secluded and shrouded in darkness and terror. Few girls realize what they’ve gotten themselves into until it’s too late. One girl manages to escape and reveal her findings to Dr. Jozef Klemperer (played by Tilda Swinton in heaps of old-man makeup), a doctor who takes a great interest in the girl’s detailed diary of the witches and their order. Another won’t be so lucky to escape, becoming trapped inside the academy and having her body violently contorted into a mess of broken bones and twisted muscles.
The latest to join the academy is Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), a red-headed American that strives to be the best and rejects her Mennonite family from Ohio. Blanc looks upon her with great promise, hoping she’ll make the perfect witch with her dedication to dance, eager to improve her form and jumps. And with her violent dance comes a weaving of spells, seemingly unknown by Susie of what she is doing. She seems so focused on the dance she has no idea that the energy coursing through her body is fulfilling a dark prophecy and keeping the halls quiet from those seeking to escape and expose. If the dances don’t kill you, the vicious spells and basement of horrors will.
Guadagnino’s Suspiria is the ultimate fever dream of a nightmare. The editing is mostly chaotic, creating a sense of panic even in scenes where there doesn’t seem to be much of it. There’s a swirling of plotlines surrounding the witch academy, including the dark backstory of Susie’s family, the RAF terrorist situations pulsating out literally out the school windows, and Klemperer’s tragic past that has driven him to save young girls from terrible fates. Dialogue dips between subtle remarks of the dance to crudely bold statements about having sex with animals. And the violence goes the extra mile of gore, resulting in one of the trippiest, bloodiest, most vomit-inducing climaxes of any film you’ll see in 2018, guaranteed.
While Suspiria is the type of horror I dig immensely, for how rarely something so psychological and putrid as this comes along, I feel the need to tack on a footnote that is by no means everyone’s cup of tea, especially if you don’t like your tea with blood, guts and decaying bodies. It’s very slow-moving, stunningly silent in its staging, and overblown with the red when the witch ritual is abounding. But if all that sounds like tasty ingredients for a good horror, Suspiria is a real treat with fantastic performances, beautiful staging, and an uneasy vibe throughout, perfect the type of horror that digs deep and pierces the soul.