The Suspiria Remake Problem
Let me start off by saying I am unabashedly biased towards Dario Argento’s work. My favorite genre of film is Giallo. My favorite film of the genre is The Bird with Crystal Plumage. I do not see Suspiria as a Giallo film, even though it has a lot of the tropes. I have always viewed Suspiria as a fantasy / horror film. It is a mesmerizing barrage of color or sound that had me enraptured as a child. I remember staying up late to watch it on an old VHS copy on an old mono television. I most recently watched the 4k Bluray remaster of the film and was blown away again. The film truly holds up to time. The story of an American girl traveling to the prestigious European dance academy. She chalks up all the odd behavior of those around her to her American cultural ignorance, but almost too late realizes that there is a much darker reason for the strangeness. The mix of vibrant color and brutal violence is hypnotic when teamed with Claudio Simonetti’s masterful score. It’s a love letter written in neon blood.
Then there’s the remake…
It was 2017 when I first heard they were remaking Suspiria. I was excited at first. By all reports, the filmmakers were going to be working with Dario Argento’s blessing. Luca Guadagnino, an Italian director, was at the helm. It was exhilarating to think of a new Suspiria dreamscape aided by new digital technology. Then the movie came out and let’s just say opinions were mixed.
Non-horror critics and fans lauded the movie. They said it was a masterpiece. Horror fans, especially those who were familiar with the original film were mortified. Dario Argento distanced himself from the film stating in an interview with Radio Rai 1 that: “the film betrayed the spirit of the original film.” Review scores online hovered somewhere around the mid 60%’s. Most telling though, the film bombed at the box office. It took in worldwide gross of $7.7 million in ticket sales compared to a $20 million budget. Mind you this is before the theatrical box office truly took a nosedive. People were still going to see horror movies, just not this one.
Where did the remake go wrong to cause such antipathy? Let’s count the ways. Spoilers Ahead!
1. The remake replaces the bright, vibrant 70s ballet school with bleak gray on gray Cold War setting. Color is sparing. While the filmmakers may have wanted color to be used to emphasize specific scenes, the lack only made the movie look cheap. I think for those who love the artistry of the original film, this was the biggest sin.
2. The film is too long. Plain and simple. There is easily forty minutes in this film where nothing happens.
3. Heavy handed Socio-political messaging. Let me preface this next section with the fact that I support old school feminism. My mother was the bread winner in my family and for thirty years I’ve had to watch her work her hands to the bone making a third of her male coworkers. It’s bullshit. That being said, this movie overdoes the feminist message. Where the original film deftly navigated feminism and geopolitical historical imagery, this movie is ham-fisted in trying to cater to current cultural trends. For example, in one scene the witches hypnotize a couple of policeman in order to pull their pants down and laugh and scream at the men’s penises.
4. There isn’t anyone root for. The cast is very good. Tilda Swinton (Madame Blanc) and Dakota Johnson (Susie) have an electric chemistry. When they are in frame together, the movie is at its best, but herein lies the problem. Susie is supposed to be our protagonist. Yet, we don’t spend much time with her at all. Most of our time is split between another dance student, Sarah, and a local psychiatrist, Dr. Klemperer. Sarah is never fleshed out. She is just a mechanism of the film, a cardboard cutout of the character. There is one point in the film where she goes to warn Susie of the witches, and even Susie seems to have forgotten who Sarah is. There is not relationship built between anyone that sticks outside of Susie and Madame Blanc. Dr. Klemperer (also played by Tilda Swinton) is more sympathetic, but in that lies another problem. His side story about his missing wife who was killed by the Russian Secret police is part of the 40 minutes that have nothing else to do with the main story and shouldn’t even be in the movie. This movie should be about Susie, but instead we get a half a dozen characters with side stories that we don’t care about.
5. Susie. The lead character in this film feels like a supporting role. That’s a problem. What we learn of her is mostly through flashbacks to her supposed Mennonite upbringing. Even this though is meant to show how put down she is as a woman. She’s burned for masturbating by her over religious mother. We get a few scenes of her talking with Madame Blanc, but Dakota Johnson gets so little to work with in the script, she might has well played the character as a mute. That leads to the most frustrating part of the movie.
6. The ending. I love the twist in this film, but its wasted due to the set-up not ever being out in place. If the 40 useless minutes had been cut and the movie had focused on Suzie. If it had truly developed her as our eyes in the film. The twist of her being an ancient witch would have been a punch in the gut. The fact that the flashbacks to her Mennonite family were actually flashbacks from an early time in civilization. It could have been groundbreaking. Hell, it could have launched a new 3 Mothers trilogy. Instead, the writers and directors wasted it on a bloated, nearly unwatchable film. I feel bad for Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson. They were so very good in their roles.
It took me three tries to makes it through the full 152 minute run time. I forced myself to power through. I’m glad I did. The ending showed me what they had hoped to achieve. The ambition in those last fifteen minutes broke my heart. It could have been so much better.
