A good movie

In fact, I wanted to see the original version first but since this remake was directly available thanks to my TV provider, I thought I might as well check it out anyway. Well, if you thought that ‘Black Swan’ gave a creepy look on the dance world, I think that Luca Guadagnino managed to deliver here the creepiest dance movie ever. Seriously, this movie was pretty much the stuff of nightmares and it was often quite spellbinding to behold. Still, even though I enjoyed most of it, the whole thing didn’t completely work though. First of all, I think it was a mistake to let the audience know almost right from the start that the teachers at this dance company were some kind of witches. Indeed, it would have been much spookier, much stronger if they had kept it more ambiguous. The fact that the running time was quite long made this even worse (it was apparently almost 1 hour longer than Argento’s version). Then, in spite the previously mentioned running time, we didn’t really get to know any of the characters and, probably even more problematic, they didn’t evolve whatsoever between the beginning and the end. I mean, even if Dakota Johnson did a deliver a very strong performance, probably her best so far, she still felt like an empty vessel. Still, from a visual point of view, Guadagnino delivered here another gorgeous movie and some images and scenes were quite haunting. It was also a movie during which there was so much stuff going on going such as history, war, politics, gender, witchcraft, horror, psychology, … It was probably too much to handle but this mix was still intriguing to behold. Anyway, to conclude, even if it wasn't a complete homerun, it was still a nice watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.