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The eternal hope is that when someone decides to remake a movie, they choose material that didn’t work before, giving the production room for improvement as it searches for reinterpretation. 1977’s “Suspiria” is a horror masterpiece, emerging from the demented depths of co-writer/director Dario Argento, who took the premise of an innocent coming into contact with pure evil and twisted it into a Technicolor freak-out, creating a thunderous achievement in sight and sound, also developing his interest in abstract areas of the occult. Screenwriter David Kajganich and director Luca Guadagnino have decided to return to Argento’s original picture for an update, and while they deserve some credit for trying to keep their feature as far away from the original as possible, this obsession to do something different results in a self-conscious, overwrought film that runs nearly twice as long as Argento’s endeavour.
The year is 1977, and Susie (Dakota Johnson) has moved from Ohio to Berlin to join the Markos Dance Academy, with hopes to impress the esteemed Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). The dancers are buzzing about the loss of colleague Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), who recently confessed to her psychotherapist, Josef (Swinton), her fears about the organization, declaring its run by a coven of witches. Susie focuses on her skills in the studio, making friends with Sara (Mia Goth), who’s growing unsure about her safety, while winning over Madame Blanc, taking control of the academy’s centrepiece performance, which requires complete submission to dramatic movement. Looking to investigate claims of witchcraft, Josef makes critical discoveries about the women who run the academy, while Susie gives herself to Madame Blanc, who senses something special about the young star during a time of preparation among the staff.
Guadagnino is currently riding a creative high, scoring critical and commercial hits with “A Bigger Splash” and “Call Me by Your Name.” He’s obviously a talented man with an intense appreciation for the value of cinematic form and experimentation, but “Suspiria” isn’t material that’s easily cracked open. Argento’s vision for hellraising at a ballet school was defiantly scattered, generating his own feel for narrative progression, which often involved shocking acts of violence, gloriously photographed to resemble a primary colored wonderland. The new “Suspiria” isn’t as brazen, with Guadagnino slowing down the velocity of the source material, reworking Susie’s experience in Berlin into multiple chapters charting her immersion into darkness. The screenplay has a lot of time to play with, and Kajganich tries to step beyond the original picture, providing a fuller meal of motivations for several characters while erasing most of the mystery, identifying Madame Blanc’s team as witches right away, steering the remake into a study of evil forces, not the concealment of them.
The new “Suspiria” is tirelessly artful, starting with the modern dance movement of the school, getting away from the fragility of Argento’s ballet to arrange hostile displays of bodily expression. Cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is deliberately drained of color, questing to achieve a period look and remain a polar opposite viewing experience from the 1977 effort. The hostility of Berlin also plays an important part in the atmosphere of the movie, finding domestic terrorism and Nazi history adding unease to the tale, also permitting it more time outside the dance academy. The addition of Josef to the story offers some expanse that wasn’t there before, also introducing more of an investigative aspect to the overall haunting. And Susie isn’t the wide-eyed child sent to the slaughter, finding trauma from her past guiding her future (guilt drives most characterizations). There’s dramatic texture to give “Suspiria” substance and some narrative direction, but Guadagnino is easily distracted by superfluous additions, settling on a whopping 152 minute run time for his picture that’s entirely unwarranted. There’s nothing here that earns the length, keeping the helmer far too permissive with the final edit, giving into excess which often throttles potentially scarring scenes of discovery as a few of the dancers experience the full impact of the coven’s wrath.
“Suspiria” is grotesque, fixated on wetness and disease, with a droning score from Thom Yorke to keep it off-rhythm, fatiguing the effort. It’s dramatically limited, with Johnson unable to conjure screen authority as Susie, often fading into the background during any scene that doesn’t involve dancing, and Swinton’s dual role is more bewildering than necessary, with makeup achievements failing to pull off the old man illusion. Perhaps the greatest sin “Suspiria” commits is its lack of concentration, finding Guadagnino so intent on showing off what he can do with a challenging remake, he loses sight of the end game, finally going messy with witchery just to find closure, and even that is elusive. I recognize that some will be mesmerized by Guadagnino’s work here, but as a remake of a stone-cold classic, this “Suspiria” pales in comparison to the original. Argento managed to capture a widescreen nightmare in a distinctive, thrilling manner. Guadagnino turns cinematic fear into multiplex imprisonment.
