Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) puts his own spin on Dario Argento's classic 1977 fantasy horror. Stars Chloë Grace Moretz (Let Me In) and Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash stars Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson.
"A darkness swirls at the centre of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the troupe’s artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up." (Venice Film Festival)
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65%332 reviews
It does make for a lengthy sit, and understandably some will balk at its excessive exposition. But it’s also genuinely mesmerising, sustaining a two-and-a-half-hour duration with lashings of camp, rhapsodic dance choreography and wildly unpleasant body-horror that somehow doesn’t even begin to prime us for the orgiastic freefall of a climax.
Full reviewLuca Guadagnino’s Suspiria isn’t the Suspiria you know—and all the better for it. Seemingly unencumbered by any obligation to pander to purists of Dario Argento’s 1977 original, Guadagnino allows his freak flag to fly high with this categorically bananas reworking.
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I assume anybody unfortunate enough to watch me dance experiences the same feelings as audiences sitting through the new or old Suspiria: abject horror, and an instant dismissal of the very possibility of a higher power or grander purpose. For a long time I considered myself somebody who puts the oogie in the boogie, but director Luca Guadagnino's remake of Dario Argento’s classic 1977 giallo pic has comforted me with the idea that I might instead be demonically possessed.
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Suspiria is a gorgeous, hideous, uncompromising film, and while it seeks to do many things, settling our minds about the brutality of the past and human nature is not one of them.
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By the time it drags itself to the finish line, you may think, "Okay, now we know what 'Suspiria' looks like as an art film. Can we please go back to when it was just a garishly flamboyant piece of bat-house trash?"
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Traditional horror fans won't be pleased: Almost transgressively, Guadagnino has deprioritised the shocks, even the fear. But in their place, he's pumped up the exotic strangeness and crafted a movie you can get lost in, which is the ultimate tribute.
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There are smart moments of fear and subliminal shivers of disquiet, the dance sequences are good and of course Guadagnino could never be anything other than an intelligent film-maker. But this is a weirdly passionless film.
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Any film from Guadagnino demands to be seen, and Suspiria is no exception. But I kinda wish all this effort and skill had been expended in the service of a truly new story, not a project that invites comparison to an of-its-time unimprovable original.
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The passion of Guadagnino's messy vision - the swirl of emotions he conjures on this grand canvas - has a forcefulness that mostly transcends its sizable flaws.
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Guadagnino has made an ambitious homage, but it doesn't really benefit from its more intellectualised gaze, instead draining the stomach-churning thrills of great horror.
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I expected to be peering at the screen between splayed fingers, but instead I was peering at my watch.
Full reviewSuspiria (2018) is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Prime Video and Apple TV.
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