If you’re a horror fan of nearly any walk of life, you’ve at least heard talk of Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria. The cult classic is renowned for its imagery, cinematography, and overall creepiness. And like all excellent movies, we’ve got to make a remake of it, less we don’t fix what’s not broken.
This first trailer doesn’t give us much in terms of the plot. We can see that, like the original, the story will take place in a dance academy, likely involve a coven of some kind, and revolves around a mysterious young woman who is missing. The trailer does highlight some of the creepy imagery we’re in store for, and does manage to showoff the 70’s bleak European aesthetic, a very different take from Argento’s big and bright look.
The film stars Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Lutz Ebersdorf, Jessica Harper, and Chloë Grace Moretz, and has an original score by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. The film is directed by Luca Guadagnino, who directed the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name. Both films have a dated look and feel, but Call Me By Your Name was a sunlit romance while this looks more like a post-war Satanic thriller.
In a way, I am glad Guadagnino is going with a radically different take, otherwise we might get another Psycho remake, which I frankly could not handle. It will be interesting to see what aspects of modern horror versus the old school he chooses to keep from the original. And with such a stellar cast, it’s likely that the performances are going to be memorable even if the film overall is not. Here’s hoping for a hair-raising good time either way.
Suspiria premieres in theaters on November 2, 2018.
