Horror Review: Suspiria (2018)

The basic plot of Suspiria – an American dancer named Susie Bannion joins a dance company that’s really a front for a coven that’s willing to kill whoever gets in their way – remains the same in its 2018 remake. However, Dario Argento’s original was a waking nightmare powered by OTT bloody deaths and an epic soundtrack by Goblin, whereas Lucas Guadagnino’s version is the complete opposite: colourless and very much grounded in its 70s Germany setting, almost obsessively so.

Argento kept the focus on the dance school, but Guadagnino splits it three ways: the Markos Dance Company; a widowed therapist, Josef Klemperer, who has one of the dancers, Patricia, as a patient; and the wounds of WWII Germany that are still very much open and fuel present day events (though oddly, the fact that the Markos Dance Company was around during the Third Reich only leads to praise for Madame Blanc’s feminism in a time when women were seen as nothing but broodmares). There’s always a TV or radio on, informing viewers of what Baader-Meinhof has been up to, and when Patricia disappears, she’s said to have joined her revolutionary friends. There’s also Klemperer’s Jewish wife, who disappeared during the war, and whose fate remains uncertain. This will lead to a ridiculous (and somewhat insulting) scene near the end of this more than two-and-a-half-hour movie in which it desperately tries to pretend the story is actually deep and meaningful (it’s not). Another hint that this movie may be taking itself too seriously is the fact that it pretentiously announces that it’s split into six acts and a prologue (1977 Berlin, Palace of Tears, The Taking, In the Mutterhaus (All the Floors are Darkness), Suspiriorum, and finally, A Sliced-Up Pear). Hmm, why? Even after watching the whole thing, I don’t get what was the point of that.

We first become aware of the bad things going on at the Company when Patricia turns up at Klemperer’s office singing and muttering about the evil witches who took her hair, her urine, and her eyes and after luring her in by teaching her nice things, like telepathy, wanted to do some unspecified bad thing to her. Naturally, Klemperer thinks these are just delusions masking the real problem. It’s going to take a while (a very long while) until he realizes just how wrong he was. Patricia runs away but conveniently leaves behind her notebook filled with useful information about these evil, omnipresent witches, who allowed her to share their secrets with an outsider and never tried to get her stuff back from the therapist’s office. These are some weirdly passive evil witches. The original coven not only killed the runaway dancer but also the friend who sheltered her. Now that’s some proper witchy efficiency. Anyway, the Markos Dance Company is now missing a dancer. Luckily for them, Susie Bannion has arrived in Berlin to audition, even though she has no references or formal training. She’s running away from an American Mennonite farmhouse, her disapproving, dying mother, and her many siblings. Said farmhouse also has an ominous ode to mothers hanging on the wall. Susie is accepted and soon she’s aweing everyone with her raw talent and nabs the lead in Volk, the big dance number the Company has been rehearsing. That was Patricia’s role, but she just left one day and hasn’t been seen since. I’m sure she’s fine, happily blowing shit up, and not being kept as a half-conscious zombie in one of the building’s secret rooms.

There are a lot more witches in the remake, though none of them really stands out apart from Blanc. In fact, she’s so important that she even competes with the yet unseen Markos for leadership. She also doubts that Markos really is Mother Suspiriorum (which she very much was in the original). With all these witches, you’d think there’d be plenty of cool magic – there isn’t. Blanc sends their dreams to Susie in the shape of a rainbow-coloured mist that just looks cheap, and we don’t even get to see Susie learning anything. The most original use of magic happens after one of the dancers, Olga, loses it during a rehearsal and storms out of the building… or at least tries to. The witch with glasses starts crying and suddenly Olga’s eyes are so full of tears she’s forced to turn back. Hmm, why? She knows there’s weird shit going on and she was so close to the exit. And why use tears when one of the other Mothers is called Mother of Tears? It’s just confusing. And no, that witch isn’t important. In fact, she is later easily killed by Markos, who isn’t even in the room, to ascertain her authority. Anyway, because she didn’t just power through the sudden influx of tears and got the fuck out of there, Olga ends up locked in a room of mirrors. At the same time, Blanc guides Susie through the dance steps and even gives her some of her magic mojo. This binds both girls and Susie’s dance moves twist Olga and drag her across the room until she’s a broken, though still alive, mess on the floor, ready to be picked up by the witches’ special hooks. This sequence should be good, yet there’s something that doesn’t quite work. The way Olga’s body twists doesn’t look natural, and I don’t mean that in a Shit, That Must’ve Hurt way. She should have a lot more exposed fractures, but Guadagnino is more interested in showing purplish flesh folding over itself until Olga looks like a misshapen meat blob than in snappy bones and creative skeletal geometry.

Susie loved her deadly dance and compares it to animal copulation. She also pees in a cup (which we get to see) (because this movie is raw and real), so now the witches have her urine, just like with poor Patricia. Is this normal procedure in dance companies? What excuse did the witches come up with? Drug testing? While Susie is settling in with ease, Klemperer goes to the police to report Patricia’s disappearance. When two detectives go to the Company to inquire about the missing dancer, they end up the witches’ temporary playthings before getting their memories wiped. At the same time, Sara, who was a friend of Patricia’s, gets Susie to help her to look for her and Olga’s files in the director’s office hoping to find their contact info. After opening a hidden door, Susie sees the witches with the detectives and smiles, which is the only hint in the entire movie that there may be something off about her.

Like I wrote earlier, Blanc sends Susie the coven’s dreams and so she has confusing nightmares involving blood and sex, which aren’t nearly as interesting or visually striking as you’d expect. Turns out all the girls have had nightmares at some point and just laugh it off. I’m guessing the witches have been using magic to stop them from freaking out and discussing the contents of these nightmares with each other even though they didn’t do anything to Patricia and Olga until the very end. They also didn’t stop Klemperer from going to the police or, like I wrote before, bothered retrieving Patricia’s notebook, and they missed something very important that I won’t reveal just yet. This could be part of a well thought out strategy by the coven… or the typical bad writing that can be found in movies that not only don’t bother establishing clear limitations to the characters’ abilities, but also need a certain amount of plot-induced stupidity (or in this case, passivity) for the story to work. Anyway, Susie has been chosen as the Patricia replacement by Markos, who hides under the floor of the rehearsal room so she can suck a little of her tasty life force. Blanc, who has become fond of Susie, doesn’t want to rush whatever they’re going to do with her, but doesn’t try to stop it either. She even wants to bring back the old custom of having a witness for the ritual, which would be Klemperer. So, they do know about him and are just going to do nothing?

After going to the police didn’t work, the still alive and inquisitive Klemperer reaches out to Sara, whom the witches hoped could become the Company’s ambassador, and shows her Patricia’s notebook. We also get some info about the Mothers – Mother Tenebrarum (of Darkness), Mother Lachrymarium (of Tears), and Mother Suspiriorum (of Sighs) – which are described as being older than God and the Devil. The movie basically repackaged the Three Mothers as some Mother Goddess crap because the people behind this somehow missed all the news about murderous, horribly abusive real-life mothers and are convinced the ability to push a baby out of your genitals makes you a force for goodness. Sara doesn’t believe Patricia’s ramblings and defends the Company as a family and a place filled with love. Before she leaves, Klemperer tells her Patricia mentioned secret rooms.

Susie remains oblivious and fully embraces her role in the Company through Blanc’s teachings, which the movie barely shows. We also don’t see that much bonding, though we’re expected to accept Blanc’s deep feelings for her. Unlike passive Susie, Sara starts investigating and the movie replicates the original’s counting steps sequence, though it doesn’t make much sense here. In Argento’s Suspiria, it happens after Sara and Susie hear the staff wandering around the building at night and realize that a corridor is too short for so many steps. Here, Sara just starts counting and somehow deduces that there’s a secret passage. It would’ve been better to just have her notice an extra window or something outside that didn’t match the interior layout of the building. Anyway, she finds a room full of weird shit and sees the witches performing a ritual. She runs away, taking one of the hooks with her. Sara and Klemperer meet again and even after everything she’s seen, she’s still shocked about Madame Blanc’s possible involvement. Seriously, Sara? How the hell would she not know? And of course, she goes back even though Klemperer tells her not to. Idiot. She warns Susie, whose hair the witches already have, but she doesn’t listen. Oh, and while Susie was getting a haircut, her still not dead mother is confessing to a priest that she was her greatest sin. And that’s all we’re going to get about Susie’s origins.

Now, it’s Sara’s turn to mysteriously leave without warning, and right before the Company gets to perform Volk for the last time ever. I’m sure she’s fi… oh, she’s not dead yet. She’s wandering the secret passages in the stringy costume all the dancers are wearing, looking for Patricia. She finds her and other girls, zombified and looking all purplish and meat blobby. She tries to run away and breaks her leg in a confusing manner. Was that a hole on the floor? Why are there holes on the floor and why is it so dark? The witches find her and heal her leg. Aww, that’s nice. The other girls are already dancing for the audience, among whom is Klemperer. Suddenly, Sara turns up at the performance and starts dancing her part like a puppet until near the end her leg re-breaks and she falls. Ouch! Later, Blanc and Susie speak telepathically because Susie has already begun learning magic and the movie never bothered telling viewers about it. Turns out Susie was the one who called Sara to the performance. How? Really, how? Blanc tries to warn her about what’s going to happen, but she seems very accepting of her fate. Meanwhile, Klemperer throws the hook Sara took and Patricia’s belongings off a bridge. When he gets home, his wife is there. She tells him how she managed to escape the country but it’s all an illusion and a ruse to lead him back to the Company, where a couple of pissed off witches grab him. So, apparently the witches are powerful enough to retrieve the hook from the bottom of the river, but not powerful enough to create some magical seals to lock their secret doors. The original witches didn’t do that either, but they were a lot quicker to act when there was trouble. Anyway, it’s finally time for the big ritual.

Susie puts on her special I’m Ready To Become The Vessel For An Evil Witch dress and goes to meet the coven. All the girls are there, dead and alive. Klemperer is there too, naked, lying on the steps. Sara gets randomly disembowelled. Why did that even happen? The living girls dance, naked and clearly in a trance. Mother Markos is also there and also naked. She hopes to trade her disgusting body (really, it's gross) for Susie’s, but it will only work if she’s willing. Patricia got cold feet, which ruined the ritual. Blanc wants Susie to be sure and Markos just slices her neck telekinetically. From behind. God, this movie’s gore is so fucking weird! And I don’t mean that as a compliment. Another thing that Susie must do for the ritual to work is to kill her own mother because, like in Highlander, there can be only one: “Death to any other mother”. Instead, Susie summons a shadow creature from somewhere and reveals herself as the real Mother Suspiriorum, for whom Markos was anointed. The creature goes around the room killing traitor Markos and her supporters, who probably had no idea she was lying. Susie puts the zombies out of their misery and watches as the girls keep dancing, which she deems beautiful. Later, a dressed Klemperer is led out of the building by one of the surviving witches and told to go home.

That twist made absolutely no sense, though it explains why Susie was so damn passive throughout the movie. The problem is, if she had the power to do that all along, why wait? If she had done that right on arrival, both Olga and Sara would still be alive, which makes her cradling Sara’s body pretty ridiculous. Are we really supposed to believe she cared deeply for a girl she didn’t bother saving? And how the hell didn’t any of the witches realise Susie was more than she seemed? Markos even tasted her life force. Blanc couldn’t have known, or she wouldn’t be so worried. Susie’s mother said she was her greatest sin but why? Was she different from the start or did her risk-taking lead her to become a vessel for Mother Suspiriorum? Was that what she meant when she told Madame Blanc she had been punished for hitchhiking? Movies with stupid twists shouldn’t be this long – it gives people time to think about the plot and realize how dumb it is.

We’ve finally arrived at the epilogue. The girls don’t remember what happened and the surviving witches clean up the bloody mess. They put Blanc’s head back in place and she appears to come back to life, but her head falls again and she’s dead again? I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. However, the movie doesn’t end here. Klemperer is home, looking at his wife’s fake Aryan papers, when Mother Suspiriorum shows up. She tells him his wife was captured and died in a concentration camp. Naturally, he’s devastated, but she tells him it wasn’t his fault and that while “we need guilt and shame”, they don’t need his guilt and shame. So, she erases his memory of everything, including his wife. Who’s “we”? Germany? The world? And if she cares, where was she during the Holocaust? It doesn’t matter because this scene is meaningless – just a lame attempt at creating depth. Presenting Mother Suspiriorum as benevolent when she spent most of the movie doing nothing and had been letting Markos do whatever she wanted for decades is just ridiculous. Oh, and don’t forget that the Madame Blanc supporters were every bit as murderous as the other faction, so it’s not as if she was stopping evil. She was just punishing a rogue follower.

The 2018 Suspiria is overlong, visually unappealing, pretentious, and dull. The characters are bland, the plot doesn’t make sense, the dance performances aren’t particularly inspired, and the death scenes are no match for the original’s. This is neither a feminist tale nor a deep analysis of the delicate situation in 1970s Germany. I don’t even understand why Guadagnino wanted to do a remake. There have been so many similar movies, where a new arrival finds out there’s something wrong at a respected institution, that there was no need to connect this to Argento’s classic. Verdict: this isn’t worth over two hours and a half of anyone’s time.

By Danforth