Earlier this year, a new buzzword to describe critically acclaimed horror movies became responsible for intense debate online: “Elevated Horror”. Initially coined to describe the critical hype surrounding A Quiet Place, it was soon the detested phrase de jour by horror fans concerned that it was disparaging to the genre as a whole, with the suggestion that a film was good in spite of being a horror film, elevating above the genre and deserving of a respect seldom afforded to horror cinema.
The Epitome of self consciously elevated horror
Elevated Horror should, in an ideal world, be a disparaging term against a film in the genre, used to describe any film with self consciously grandiose aspirations that leave the purpose of terrifying audiences as an afterthought. In this regard, Luca Guadagnino’s loose remake of Dario Argento’s iconic ’70s giallo undeniably sees itself as being more than just a mere horror. It takes the streamlined gothic narrative of the original and overcomplicates it, adding a plethora of feminist and mid-to-late 20th century German political themes to the mix, feeling more like an academic essay than a revitalised update of a genre staple. Guadagnino’s direction isn’t at fault here – but even the dynamic aesthetics can’t compensate for the convoluted, dull effort that this is.
An opening title card informs us that we’re about to see “six acts and an epilogue set in divided Berlin”; an American girl, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) arrives in the German capital with the intention of joining the Markos Dance Academy, despite her lack of formal training. She has a minor obsession with the school’s director and choreographer, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), and ends up impressing her enough on initial audition that she’s asked to join, and even lead their ambitious new performance.
However, all is not what it seems at the Academy. Another dancer, Patricia (Chloe Moretz), disappeared the day before arrival, with the dance tutors claiming she joined the Red Army Faction. However, Patricia’s psychiatrist Dr. Jozef Klemperer (Tilda Sw… sorry, “Lutz Ebersdorf”) was given her diaries prior to her disappearance, detailing conspiracies about the “three mothers”, a coven of witches controlling the students there. Klemperer initially writes it off as a delusion, but soon starts meeting with Susie after she grows suspicious about the haunted hallways beneath the academy, and the intense nightmares she’s started getting since moving in that echo the passages in the diary.
This is barely scratching the surface of the narrative, which across six acts and an unnecessary epilogue, turns simplistic style over substance source material into a head-scratchingly dense work. The story takes place throughout the German autumn of 1977, with news reports of the Red Army Faction’s kidnapping of a former SS official and their hijacking of a plane to demand the release of four imprisoned Red Army members.
The Berlin Wall is omnipresent throughout, located opposite the dance academy, and later plot points even refer further back to German history with the invocation of concentration camps. It’s easy to imagine film students writing thesis papers on the political themes inside Suspiria for decades to come, yet upon first glance, these are nothing but window dressing to the story, offering the illusion of deeper meaning but with no substantive allegory in the narrative justifying referencing these events in the first place.
A Victory for practical effects
Due to the stiflingly boring nature of the story itself, which contorts itself into a number of thematically heavy handed subplots that obfuscate the simple pleasures of Argento’s original, it can be easy to overlook the technical merits that are far stronger than those of its predecessor. Speaking to Film Inquiry’s Alex Lines at Melbourne International Film Festival in 2017, Guadagnino spoke of removing the neon lighting audiences associate with Suspiria in order to make a more distinctive work that doesn’t rely on the formal traits of the source material.
Working with Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whom Guadagnino previously worked with for Call Me By Your Name, the director creates a look that seems contrary to how we perceive the look of horror; here, the rain soaked, gothic Berlin streets and darkened hallways beneath the academy are frequently contrasted with beautiful rural landscapes in flashbacks (Mukdeeprom, a previous collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is particularly skilled at capturing the understated beauty of the countryside).
Similarly, Thom Yorke’s haunting score (the best of 2018 so far) offers an underlying melancholy that sharply contrasts with the gory horror onscreen. It’s some of the least abstract work he’s produced this decade, and with all due respect to Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool LP, the film’s haunting refrain “Suspirium” is the best piece of music he’s created in recent memory. If it weren’t for the twin threats of A Star is Born, and the fact the Academy wouldn’t dream of touching a film as provocative as Suspiria, then the original song and original score categories would be there for Yorke to take. I’m sure his bandmate Jonny Greenwood, one of the best film composers of the century, will be glad that Thom won’t be beating him in getting that illusory award on his first attempt.
But the most extraordinary thing about Suspiria is the make-up. By now, you’ll know that the character of Jozef Klemperer is played by Swinton, buried beneath prosthetics that took four hours to put on, including a prosthetic penis that is only glimpsed briefly on one occasion, but Swinton was adamant to have fitted daily to help her get into character. The fact a male performer could have been hired in this role (the fact Swinton is playing this part is not a spoiler, as it never factors in) just makes the intense efforts to make Swinton appear as an 80-year-old man seem all the more commendable.
For this alone, the film is an achievement – but it’s also necessary to consider the work that went into using practical effects to visualise everything from dancers being torn limb from limb as they get placed under spells, to the grotesque creations we bare witness to in later acts. Suspiria is a fascinating work when considering all the elements that have gone in to its creation, a resounding victory for practical effects in the era of incessant CGI, even within the horror genre.
Suspiria: Conclusion
But I can’t pretend that the film is the sum of all these parts; as a work of storytelling, Guadagnino’s reimagining of the canonical giallo is a boring mess with higher thematic aspirations than it’s able to realise. As joyously disgusting as the practical effects are, they don’t compensate for an overlong and quite frankly, tedious affair.
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Suspiria opens in limited release in the US on October 26, expanding nationwide on November 2. It’s released in the UK on November 16. All international release dates are here.
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