Suspiria (2018) Review

"Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?"

-Susie Bannion

A reimagining of the 1977 film, this version of Suspiria follows Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), an American dancer, as she travels to Germany to join the prestigious Markos Dance Academy.  Susie quickly becomes the star of the academy and is unconcerned with the disappearances of several other dancers.  The truth is; the Academy is run by a coven of witches and they have big plans for Susie.

What Works:

This version of Suspiria does a much better job of explaining what is happening.  The original version never really explains what is going on and leaves it mostly to your imagination.  In this version you find out pretty much all of what is going on very early in the film.  They leave out the details and fill those in sporadically, but you have a general idea what is happening in the film and understand exactly what the witches' motivation is.

The violence and the gore in this movie is brutal.  The first really gruesome scene is where a dancer, Olga (Elena Folkina), gets horrifically beaten.  It's actually really hard to watch, but you can't look away.  The scene is incredibly well done and something out of a nightmare.  The gore and violence is infrequent, but solid throughout the rest up of the film until the 3rd act, where it goes completely off the rails and we get one of they single most over-the-top bloody scenes I have ever witnessed.  It looks incredible and will definitely leave an impression.

Tilda Swinton plays three characters in this movie, but her primary role is Madam Blanc, the main dance instructor.  Swinton is great in the role and her relationship with Susie is fascinating and their scenes together are some of the best parts of the film.  Swinton is perfectly cast in this role and brings a cold compassion to the story.

My favorite part of the film is a sequence where Sara (Mia Goth) explores the hidden rooms of the dance academy and what she finds is the stuff of nightmares.  It's utterly horrifying and really reminds me of David Lynch's films.  I won't say what is is, but it's traumatizing.  I only wish the film and done more exploring of what Sara finds.  We only get a peek at the horrors and I wanted more.

What Sucks:

The original film had amazing lighting, color, and sound.  This one does not.  Director Luca Guadagino decided to go with very muted and subdued colors and I can't figure out why.  The color is what makes the original so memorable.  The lack of color here comes off as bland.  The whole time I was watching it, all I could think was how much we needed more color.  I get wanting to do your own thing, but this was the wrong call.

The score is passable, but we do get a very brief section of the brilliant Goblin score from the original.  All that did was make me want to watch the original film.  Thom Yorke's score isn't remotely in the same league as the original's score.

Tilda Swinton's second character is an old man, Dr. Josef Klemperer, and this drags the film down.  I have to admit, the makeup looks amazing and should definitely be nominated for an Academy Award, but Swinton's performance was extremely distracting.  Her voice did not match the character at all.  The voice sounded like a female voice.  Every time Dr. Klemperer spoke, it took me out of the movie.  I don't understand why they didn't just get a male actor for the role.  It would have been much less time-consuming for production and the performance wouldn't have detracted from the film.

The other problem with Dr. Klemperer is his storyline is woefully uninteresting.  This character has one scene in the original film and in this he is the 3rd most important character.  I didn't care about his character in the slightest and we spend a ton of time with him.  Every time he was on screen, I grew more frustrated and just wanted to get back to the main story.

This film is over 2 and half hours long and it does not need to be.  So much of this film could have been cut out.  As I said before, the Dr. Klemperer storyline was very boring and all of it could have been cut from the film.  Also, we get a lot of historical context about what is happening in Berlin and 1977.  That's fine, but it has no bearing on the plot.  Cut it all out.  Movies should always be the length they need to be to tell they story.  Suspiria did not need to be 2 and a half hours.

Finally, the biggest problem of the film is I just didn't care.  In the original film, Suzy is quickly engaged in the mystery of what is going on and the audience is right along with her.  We are intrigued by the strangeness of the setting and the brutal murders.  We are along for the ride with Suzy and this makes her a strong protagonist.  We care about her and what is going on.  That isn't the case here.  Susie is a weak protagonist because she is so unconcerned with the mysterious disappearances.  She doesn't care, so why should we?  We can't relate to her character and she is not that interesting or likable.  It's very difficult to get invested in the story because of this and with the extremely long run time, I just wanted the film to end because I didn't care.  Story-wise, it makes sense why Susie is so apathetic by the end, but this doesn't make for a good character for the audience to view the film through.

Verdict:

The remake of Suspiria has a lot of solid craft, some excellent gore, a few nightmarish sequences, and one solid performance from Tilda Swinton, but her poor secondary performance, boring side plots, the lack of an engaging protagonist, the overly long runtime, and disappointing style prevent me from recommending this film.  I really wanted to like this one.  I typically love really weird movies, but this one ultimately fails at being an engaging film.

 5/10: Meh