Suspiria (2018)

Sticking the landing is often the hardest part of movie story telling. Especially in genre films, often the build up is too much for the finale to live up to. Suspiria (the remake) falls squarely into that category. It's a superbly filmed and crafted movie which just lets you down at the end.

Director Luca Guadagnino shows off his remarkable talent as he manages to ape the Giallo genre as well as American 70s wave film makers (like Coppola, Friedken, Lumet, etc), while also building a mounting powerful dread throughout. The first two thirds of Suspiria are electric, stylish, haunting, disturbing, and filled with delicious horror.

Thom Yorke's score is incredible. He also manages to transport us to another time while also creating something breathtakingly original. This, paired with the brutal choreography, adds to the intensity of what Guadagnino is building here. You can neither take your eyes or your ears of what you are witnessing.

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography is operatic and overwhelming. Everything about how Suspiria is constructed is luscious and referential. This speaks to me. A big part of my love of film is that it is a visual medium. I love movies that tell me a story not just through the dialogue but through all we can soak up on the screen and Suspiria has a richness to it, structurally and decoratively. But I also recognize that it can't all just look good. That has to support a strong story and characterization for it to have real impact. And for most of the movie the story here is strong enough to make it all come together.

Until the end.

The ending is appropriately off the rails. How could it not be with everything the film has been building to. When we get to the climax it is a hot mess and that in itself is pretty much necessary. Anything else would have been a disappointment. However, the story part of the ending just isn't there. Despite all the drama, all the dread, it all comes to very little, there isn't anything emotionally there. Basically it's just a power battle. And all that disgusting, gory, beauty which Guadagnino has been ushering is used to tell something kinda boring.

He spent some time leading up to his ending shoehorning in what should have been a powerful story of national guilt (it is set in Berlin in the 70s, a nation recovering from its Nazi past) which is rather thinly dismissed by the end. As the climax was playing out and all the insanity of the final moments were playing out before my eyes, I felt there just wasn't the substantive narrative depth to make it all worth it.

So Suspiria ends up as a stylish, glossy, but rather hollow spectacle. There is much to admire about Suspiria, but it remains more style than substance.

Suspiria
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Grace Moretzs, Mia Goth
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: David Kajganich