Movies
“Suspiria” Is Disturbing, To Say The Very Least
There is evil seeped into every crevice of Suspiria.
“A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.”
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writers: Dario Argento, Daria Nicoldi, David Kajganich
Stars: Chloë Grace Moretz, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Mia Goth
Release: November 2, 2018
IMDB
What a strange, scary, and confounding film. It’s fair to begin with such a phrase.
Suspiria (2018) is a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 original neon-flavored terror, albeit there are dramatic differences in filmmaking style, story and ending. Director Luca Guadagnino, who is at this point is well known for his Best Picture nominated Call Me By Your Name (2017), takes a large leap past the romantic genre and enters the realm of unceasing unease.
Suspiria has eeriness cemented into every moldy crevice of its cement setting. There is an undeniable vibe of mysterious distrust that is elevated to hypnotic body horror devolving to utter gory incomprehensible madness. Don’t be ashamed if you must look up an “Ending Explained” right after Suspiria‘s credits begin rolling. Even if you think you understood all the story’s twists and demonic turns, there is a deeper understanding one can find.
Enough linguistic stretching, time to parse out what the hell Suspiria is.
Taking place in 1970s West Berlin, the story begins with a teenage girl by the name of Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz) running through the streets to meet with her psychologist. The old man who is obligated to hear out Patricia’s worries is named Josef Klemperer (Tilda Swinton, credited as Lutz Ebersdorf), and his ears are taking in outrageous claims that his client’s dance school is run by a coven of witches. On its face, such a statement is absurd, but the frantic nature of his patient will stick in the mind of Klemperer.
While Patricia is running away from said institution, American dancer Susie Bannion (Dakokta Johnson) walks into the famed gray halls of Madame Blanc’s Markos Tanz Company looking to audition to become a part of the troupe. Bannion begins dancing in front of two older instructors, but something about the energy of the newcomers’ dance draws in the infamous Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). Such immediate fascination with a newcomer is rare for the company’s dance instructor, and seeing how Patricia has left the academy, Susie is immediately welcomed with open arms to the campus grounds.
There is an air of uneasiness poisoning every viewing minute of Suspiria, but the first true whiff of malevolent behavior comes when the various instructors are meeting by themselves. It is at this point we are educated to the fact that all the instructors at the Markos Tanz Company are witches. Said witches are holding a vote whether or not to replace their unseen leader Mother Elena Markos (Tilda Swinton, again). The Mother has become ill and ravaged with disease, yet the majority of the witches ballot to keep her in power, despite the recent loss of Patricia. Despite the setback with the runway, the coven has agreed to complete an unnamed ritual that previously had Patricia at its heart.
Susan immediately stands out among all the other performers. Not only are her talents visceral and animalistic, but her knowledge of the dance company’s newest performance is surprisingly profound. Madame Blanc and all the witches become enamored with the young prodigy, and it doesn’t take long for Blanc to begin preparing Susie for the ritual the way Patricia was groomed before her departure.
While spookiness is happening behind the scenes at the dancing academy, Dr. Klemperer begins digging into Patricia’s theories about the instructors at her former employer. While reading Patricia’s old diary entries, Klemperer learns that all the suspected witches work to serve three ancient witches – Mother Lachrymarum, Mother Tenebrarum, and Mother Suspiriorum. Patricia articulated that the sick Mother Markos thinks she is Mother Suspirorum and she needs a new body to achieve eternal life.
Klemperer’s concern for Patricia leads him to the police, but the officers assigned to the case are of no help. Eventually the only hope of the psychologist comes via a connection with a current dancer at the academy, Sara (Mia Goth). Introduced earlier in the story as Susie’s new school escort and eventual best friend, Sara is at first very skeptical about Klemperer’s radical claims. But what would you do if some old man approached you with ideas that you might be dancing for a coven of witches set on appeasing an unknown evil deity? Yes, you’d get curious.
Sara discovers that Klemperer’s finds within Patricia’s diaries are true, and she has physical proof with the iconic meat hook that is used throughout the story. Unfortunate for both investigative parties is the fact that the coven knows Sara has been prying her eyes where she shouldn’t be. The troupe’s dancer is made an example of the night of the academy’s big recital, and Klemperer is tricked by the witches and lured to the catacombs underneath the company’s grounds.
Later in the evening, after the scantily clad dancing performance, Susie is lured underground by a spiritual, spectral light. She descends down steps and sees her peers dancing wildly while Dr. Klemperer is in the fetal position in the corner. The dance instructors are in robes, and the often alluded to Mother Markos is unveiled. Susie is acting just as the coven and Mother Markos wants, but Madame Blanc is sensing something off. After a vocal rebuttal to proceeding with the ritual, Madame Blanc has her spine severed by Mother Markos.
The ritual progresses a few more steps before Susie asks Mother Markos a surprising question: whom does she serve? Mother Markos says she serves Mother Suspiriorum.
Wrong answer.
Susie reveals that she is actually Mother Suspiriorum and before the horror of the truth can be fully processed, one of the three highmost witches brutally strikes down Mother Markos for her unfaithful actions. If you recall, Mother Markos claimed that she was Mother Suspiriorum and needed a new body to become whole. Turns out the whole ritual is a sham operation built on an inflated sense of ego.
Susie then summons the embodiment of Death. Under the voiceless direction of its master, Death touches all the witches who played a part in Mother Markos’ cocamamey plot. The deaths are not pleasant for most, but Susie takes pity and bestows a peaceful earthly departure on a few dancers who were personally afflicted by the coven’s tortuous tradition. Dr. Kremperer is allowed to vacate the premises, and the witches who weren’t blown into a million bloody pieces are forced to clean up the mess. If you have seen Ready Or Not (2019), picture that type of splatter pattern..
The film ends with Susie paying a final visit to Dr. Klemperer in his bedroom. She apologizes to him for the actions of the witches at the dance company and explains that she needed time to become powerful enough to take on the coven. Dr. Klemperer gets closure, both in a personal and professional sense.
And the last scene of Suspiria is a credit scene where we see Susie, now fully Mother Suspiriorum, smiling in the direction of something off camera.
Suspiria. What a fucking weird movie.
Credit must be paid to Luca Guadagnino for making a fairly comprehensible story out of this mosh pit of ideas and concepts. Guadagnino blends his voyeur style with a David Cronenberg fondness for body horror all to honor the supernatural brightness that makes classic Dario Argento’s works most memorable. The best facets of this in Suspiria all take place within the walls of Madame Blanc’s Markos Tanz Company.
The woman’s name on the building (metaphorically) is Madame Blanc, who is played and PERFECTLY casted by Tilda Swinton. Swinton was such a natural fit for this story she decided she should play multiple characters, because, fuck it. Why not?
Swinton has the genie-in-a-bottle quality where she appears from nowhere and seemingly moves with extra limbs in her body. She has a ghostly look about her, and one could 100% believe if she is part of a cult, or coven. Swinton’s role here as Madame Blanc has a domineering hint around it, yet Swinton is able to convey a tone of fear and reverence with her eyes. When Susie begins performing in front of the troupe, Madame Blanc and all the other instructors in the room have this “oh shit” moment they are trying to hide. It’s Blanc that’s interacting with Susie the most, so Swinton gets to flex her muscles showing seething excitement and fear more than the rest.
It turns out that when Dakota Johnson gets interesting roles, she has the ability to flex her own acting talents. While most known for the 50 Shades Of Grey franchise, Johnson is on her own Kristen Stewart path or breaking the stigma of a previous role. Suspiria came out the same year as Fifty Shades Freed (2018)…talk about movies that are polar opposite from one another.
Johnson has an animalistic predatory nature when playing Susie. She arrives like a dainty little bunny, but has moments where she unleashes untamed dance motions that emulate Avatar fighting motions. Johnson’s shoulder blades are sharper than kitchen knives. Her willingness to toss her body on the uncushioned floor is like an armadillo on cocaine bouncing off the walls. Johnson is legit good in Suspiria. She is asked to be a knowing victim and then a demonic menace and you buy the mental transformation as well as the physical changes. When thinking of strong Dakota Johnson performances, you can name Suspiria and The Lost Daughter (2021).
If we are speaking about performers, we can’t go another blog post without having ANOTHER mention of Mia Goth. No actress has creeped up more often in Stanko’s Stance write-ups than the most recent scream queen. Over the past year I have watched Infinity Pool (2023), Pearl (2022), X (2022) and Suspiria (2018), all of which have Goth being a seedy and depraved individual. In this ballerina nightmare, Goth plays the victim more-so than in her future roles, yet she still fits seamlessly into the elegant medieval dungeon feeling.
The parts of Suspiria that don’t work as well take place in the background on the streets of Berlin. The dreariness of the concrete landscape matches the society altering events of a plane hijacking by the PLAF, innocent deaths, and imprisonments of members of the RAF. The events told on the news and through conversations are an effort to have the paranoia of the witches coven match that of society. The witches use the real-life backdrops as crutches to pawn off the disappearances of their dancers who have strayed too far off course.
One can appreciate that writer David Kajganich is trying to add a layer to the story, but the extra time spent on the historical context adds length onto a movie that is already demanding a lot from its audience. Not included in my brief summary of the story is a subplot about how Klemperer lost his wife during World War II and never learned what happened to her. It is strongly hinted that Klemperer’s spouse was a Jew and and was killed by the evil infrastructure of a tyranny. She was sacrificed for an irrational power hungry cause, much like the dancers in the company are puppets to an unknown evil’s plot.
This feathering connection becomes tangible when the witches trick Klemperer by having him see his wife Anke, played by Jessica Harper, who played Susie in the original Suspiria. It’s admirable that Kajganich found a symbolic connection and was able to make it happen physically within the story of his film in a way where it did affect the plot, but the stretches taken to eventually have all the ends meet goes a bit too far. The rubber band of storytelling is taught, and depending on your patience, the gathering circumference of elasticity may snap your attention in other directions.
Four pages deep in a word doc, and fair to many scrolls online, you and I may have reached the same point: how exactly did we get here? Suspiria is a complicated web of its own, so to watch it is one pleasant disturbing homework assignment in itself. How did the movie get to being made? Well that’s a whole other saga.
The first rumor of a Suspiria remake came all the way back in the early 2000s when Guadagnino acquired the rights from Argento and Daria Nicoldi. Guadagnino then offered the project to David Gordon Green, but it was canceled due to financing conflicts. People may recognize Gordon Green from his efforts directing the three Halloween remakes. People may hate him for his guidance on The Exorcist: Believer (2023), which was one of the worst movies of 2023 and conveniently, the next movie I will be writing about.
Safe to say, it’s a good thing Guadagnino retained the rights and waited nearly two decades to make Suspiria right. Sorry to say that this homage to an obscure 1970s horror did not generate a ton of audience or critical praise. The movie made less than half of its budget back, and was shut out from the awards season. After Susperia, Guadagnino made two feature length films; a documentary about the life of Italian Shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo, and the cannibalistic love story Bones And All (2022).
Up next for the one Academy Award nominee is Challengers (2024), which stars Zendaya in the middle of a steamy tennis love triangle. Whether or not the movie is great, it will garner a fuck ton of attention, including mine.
Back to Suspiria.
In summation, this horror dance homage to Dario Argento’s original 1977 cult classic is a perfect example of a great one-time watch. It will leave you thinking about it, contemplating it, and begging for visions of bodily harm to end. It fuses the style of the 70s with endless mirror shots with the looming dread of Stephen King and the sudden grotesque visuals of David Cronenberg. The story may take a sight-seeing route to get to its final destination, but once you’re there, you’ll be looking up every possible detail you can find.
STANKO RATING: B
Stanko Excel Lists | Movies, Books, Podcasts. TV Shows
Stanko Letterdbox Account
Ranking The Mission: Impossible Films: #7 – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023)
There is a lot happening in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. One could argue that there is too much going on.
Ranking The Mission: Impossible Films: #8 – Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Much maligned as the worst of the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible II doesn’t do itself any favors upon rewatch.
Four Shorty Reactions: “MaXXXine” (2024), “Monkey Man” (2024), “Raising Arizona” (1987), “Scoop” (2024)
MaXXXine (2024) “In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.” Director: Ti WestWriter: Ti WestCast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Halsey, Lily Collins, Kevin Bacon, Bob Cannavale, Michelle…
Stanko's Stance 