Suspiria (2018) Reviews

• A long-winded, obscure disappointment.

  bradjanet2019-03-10

  I finally got to see the re-make of "Suspiria" which I had been looking forward to seeing, knowing that its reception was controversial with public and critics. What a load of pretentious, obscure, incredibly long-winded drivel. There may have be the seeds of a good 120 minute schlock-horror B-movie in there somewhere had someone locked the director out of the editing suite and into a secret mirrored room that he couldn't get out of. Much of it takes place in a gloom so profound that it seems more like a podcast than a movie, and when the lights are on, surprisingly, it is just as bad as with them off. Apart from poor Tilda Swinton, all the characters seem more like a series of screams and gestures than performances. The people responsible for this movie seem to have forgotten what people liked about the original, which were the production design, the directorial flourishes such as the collapsing coloured skylight, the long pan along the outside of the building and the casting of Jessica Parker to add a touch of enjoyable weirdness, (the queen of weird has a cameo in this effort but is not allowed in any way to trot out her considerable charm). I didn't expect this flourishes to be reproduced, but I would have liked to see something just as engaging to the eye. The psychic attack on the first victim was very well done, and the movie pulls out all the stops for the finale, but by then, I was too bored to care and I had yet to still endure a pointless epilogue ... and while we are at it, why all the emphasis on a divided Berlin and echoes of the holocaust, which had minimal connection with the main plot. The worst thing, however is that it went on interminably, parading the big ambitions that it utterly failed to live up to.

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• Starts off well, but after that....

  scrappybilly2018-11-01

  Suspiria, as I'm sure anyone reading this is aware, is a remake of the 1977 Dario Argento film of the same name. This time around, it's directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call me by Your Name) and David Kajganich (who worked by Guadagnino on A Bigger Splash and created the AMC limited television show "The Terror"), and expands upon the folklore of Agento's "Three Mothers" trilogy. 2018's Suspiria is less a remake and more of an expansion on the world of the Three Mothers, even boasting a post-credit sequence, like an entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Dakota Johnson plays Susie, an American ballet dancer who joins a world-renowned German dance company, that harbors a dark secret. It is, you see, run by a coven of witches. Anyone who discovers the secret, or goes looking too deep, disappears-usually in a violent dispatching. Their motives are unclear, but they feed off of the energy of the young dancers and when one goes missing, it's easy enough for them to find another to replace her. Tilda Swinton plays Madame Blanc, the face of the dance company, a dancer and a dark entity that takes Susie under her wing. The most interesting scenes in Suspiria deal with their relationship. They're at once predator and prey, mother and daughter, and two old souls who've known each other since before time. Their interactions, and the way they involve, showcase a much, much better movie than the one we ended up getting. The problem with Suspiria is that it's a mess-in every conceivable way, it's a mess. As a horror movie, it isn't scary; the scenes of suspense are taken to comical extremes. Whether these comical extremes are intended or not are up for debate, and in a better movie, that would be a subject of interesting conversation. Here, it's simply confusing. As a drama, it's incoherent. Twists in the plot occur without any real logic behind them. As a horror fan, I love movies that boast their own kind of self-contained logic, but that requires a certain suspension of disbelief that Suspiria just didn't earn. Suspiria is a unique paradox of having both too much and too little plot. It has too much plot dedicated toward dead-ends and too little dedicated to big reveals, where they wind up confusing and pointless. In a movie where about five notable things happen, to say its 2.5-hour-long run time is bloated would be a generous understatement. In what will surely become the film's most infamous scene, Susie dances, while her movements magically contort and mutilate another dancer. This scene goes on and on and on, and the thing is, it's not even particularly well-edited. Susie will do a pirouette, and the victim on the receiving end of it will... just sort of crash into a wall, or her jaw will unhinge. None of the movements match. It would have been interesting to see one movement darkly mirror another, or vice versa, but instead it looks like we're watching two unrelated occurrences take place. It's like watching someone eat cereal juxtaposed with a violent car wreck. I don't believe it's a spoiler to reveal that Tilda Swinton also plays the character of Dr. Josef Klemperer, because it's worth noting that her performance as him makes zero sense in the context of the movie. It's a distraction. She also has an annoying acting tic as the doctor in which she clacks her jaw or smacks her lips every three seconds or so. It's a bizarre choice that I think the filmmakers were proud of, but was a miscalculation from beginning to end. In an interview, David Kajganich said, "Both Luca and I were adamant that the male gaze never intrude," and if that was their thinking here, it was a total failure. Some of the more head-scratching decisions in the film can best be summed up the the terrorism subplot, an event never directly witnessed, but terrorists have kidnapped a group of people and a days-long event unfolds surrounding the school. At first, it adds a certain ambiance to the film, and it works really well in establishing the unease of the world outside of the dance company, as though the coven of witches are affecting the world at large around them. A girl named Sara (Mia Goth) hears something and pokes her head outside and says it was a bomb, that she can smell it. This helps put us, the audience, in the world with these characters. And then, this plotline just sort of drags along and becomes, strangely, a series of news reports, as though the movie we're watching is being interrupted by an unrelated documentary. It never ties into the narrative as a whole, it's just a distraction that, like the Tilda-as-a-doctor story, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The film's finale, in which everything comes together, just sort of staggers into place. Usually, getting everyone together all at once for the finish requires events established earlier, where a character will do this or that and everything pays off. This is just a scene that sort of happens, doesn't have any real tension, and contains revelations that undo the entire plot that had preceded it. It's also an extravaganza of terrible-looking effects and smeary frame rate that looks like it was inspired by the German shot-on-video horror entry The Burning Moon, but The Burning Moon was made for maybe a few thousand dollars and is genuinely unnerving. To me, it feels like 1977's Suspiria is the remake. It feels like that film took the 2018 version, looked at all the plots that went nowhere, trimmed them out, boiled it down to its purest essence, and made a crack rock of horror. The problem, I suspect, was the director's desire to make this the first part of a trilogy, instead of a standalone movie. So, as a result, we're left with some threads that may pay off later, but sure as hell don't pay off here. Suspiria is going to be a love-it-or-hate-it type of movie. I could see loving it, it just had a certain divorce from reality I didn't think was earned; its surreal qualities weren't enough to afford its more outlandish aspects. Its grounded-in-the-real-world vibe clashed with the horror instead of holding up a mirror to it.

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• Cinematic reverse psychology

  Maciste_Brother2019-05-01

  This movie was made to showcase how utterly brilliant the original SUSPIRIA was. A true masterwork. Thanks to all of those involved with this. Your hard work has truly made Dario Argento's work shine that much more.

• People slam the original?

  Jerry021492019-01-31

  First of all, it is in serious need of editing. It is so dry and boring and drags on and on. 30-45 minutes could be excised and this still wouldn't make much sense but would be easier for some poor soul to suffer though. Anybody remember Friday the 13th:The Series late 80's tv show? The dancing in this mess was taken from that (episode The Maestro)...TEXTBOOK. There's another scene towards the end that is eerily similar to the pig gut puking scene in Gates of Hell...it worked there, it's just completely out of place here. There is no horror in this mess, there is nothing remotely scary about it, where's the atmosphere I kept hearing about? There is none. What this is as as dull as a funeral. NO character development so you don't give a toss about any of them or what happens to them. There is no lush cinematography. Where Argento created a delightful and gorgeous nightmare world, this entire mess looks like it was set in a crack den. It would have been nice if they could have decided if they wanted it to be the TANZ or The Markos school...both terms were used in the film. Tilda Swinton- I'm so sorry to do this to an actor but WHAT was she trying convey? She speaks in a weird tone attempting to sound mystical. She comes off as someone DEEP in a Morphine haze. She has no grasp of this character. AND she played a triple role? WOW, and not in a good way. Don't even get me going on Ms. Tanner..what a JOKE in this movie...NOBODY but NOBDY can play Ms. Tanner like the lovely, late Alida Valli. I knew this was coming. Madame Blanc was a joke a well. The staff looks like a bunch of old drunk slappers. I may as well end it here because there's nothing redeeming in this mess to actually review and like. Only reason I endured this was to prove to myself how bad I knew it was. And people have the audacity to slam Argento for his masterpiece? Only the kids will watch this junk. Two and one half hours of my life I can never get back. Save your time and money...this is a complete waste of both. You can find better amateur horror films for free on YouTube. This took utter GALL to remake the original. 7 stars for this mess? I'm guessing most of the people who gave it it such a high rating are under 30 and have no concept of what true horror is. This is not it.

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• Cried uncle after an hour.

  blinddog582019-05-07

  I love to watch Tilda Swindon. I watched for just over an hour and couldn't take it any longer. Disjointed, hard to follow, bouncing between English and German. Now don't go hating on the ones who rated this movie at the upper end of the scale. They saw something in it the rest us of did not.