I took off work early to go to a press screening of Suspiria, the much buzzed about horror remake. I literally sat through this two-and-a half-hour slog wishing I was doing work instead.
The weird thing about Suspiria, other than it being weird, is that it is intriguing (I haven’t seen the original, which is an hour shorter) despite how boring it all is. Director Luca Guadagnino spends plenty of time (again, two and a half hours of my life I’ll never get back) establishing his characters and more importantly the eerie mood, piecing together some story about witches and a ballet company and a redheaded Dakota Johnson dancing.
Had the movie been tightened by, you know, an hour, he may have had something here.
But instead, Suspiria is an exercise in faux art, a seemingly creative masterpiece that is as hollow as it is flat. None of the characters are particularly interesting or likable, unless you count a distracting Tilda Swinton disguised as an old man because why the hell not. Suspiria is clearly assembled as if the director thought what he was doing important, convinced that people wanted to sit through an epic bore that isn’t scary, spooky or even all that intelligent.
Its saving grace is a few bursts of gore, including a scene where a ballerina’s flexibility is pushed to the limit and then some, that are a pleasantly unpleasant break from the monotony of it all. The climax is twisted and sort of satisfying, but then Guadagnino decided to go the psychedelic route just to show that his movie is, you know, artsy. Or some bullshit.
Scene by scene, Suspiria isn’t bad, but as a whole it is a long, painful and relatively aimless production that deserves to be seen by no one.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.