Dancing with the devil

Luca Guadagnino offers a hypnotic re-imagining of ‘Suspiria’

From Director Luca Guadagnino (“A Bigger Splash,” “Call Me By Your Name”) comes a remake you never knew you wanted. Until now.

A re-imagining of Dario Agento’s 1977 psych-horror classic, “Suspiria” is told in six parts with an epilogue, lending the film a literary air. It kicks off in Cold War Berlin, in the office of psychotherapist Josef Klemperer, a frail old man whose young female patient is vexed with a paranoia that the instructors at the prestigious Markos Dance Academy are actually a coven of witches trying to possess her. At the center is Susan Dennison (Dakota Johnson), a meek American dancer from a strict religious background who gets the shot of a lifetime when she lands the lead in the company’s upcoming performance.

Fans of Argento’s 1977 giallo will no doubt see similarities in this updated retelling, but it’s not quite safe to call Guadagnino’s version a remake. Rather, much like the avant-garde style of dance depicted in the film, this version takes more expressionistic and interpretive license to tell the tale of this coven of witches. It’s a hypnotic pastiche of images, sounds, staccato rhythms and Thom Yorke’s dreamy score that surpasses the campy pop art of the original while never letting the viewer find a sense of comfort or steady footing.

This “remake” greatly improves upon its predecessor. While the original by Italian horror maestro Argento is certainly deserving of its place in the pantheon of great horror films, it’s all saturated pop colors and style—and not much substance. Eschewing the gaudy primary color scheme of the original for the murky, grey backdrop of the Berlin Wall, Guadagnino’s new film is practically devoid of saturation or color.

Working from an updated script by David Kajganach, Guadagnino gives the film the high-art treatment fans of the original seem to think it has. Stripping the original down to just the bare frame of plot while drawing upon broader stylistic influences to reshape this tale of dancing witches, this “Suspiria” plays like a Tarkovsky tone poem shot through the same psycho-hysterical lens of polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession.”

Tilda Swinton plays Madame Blanc, the famed dance company’s ardent artistic director, who stalks around her gaggle of dancers like a ravenous feline toying with its prey. Swinton plays not one, not two, but three characters in the film: Madame Blanc, the holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Dr. Klemperer and—well, the third is best left for you to figure out.

Swinton’s shapeshifting is quite a feat and it pays off, for the most part, once you get past the passable prosthetics. A frequent collaborator of Guadagnino’s, she’s certainly the star of this show, dancing circles around the rest of cast—save for Dakota Johnson, who up until now has had the misfortune of being known as the lead in the dreadful Shades of Grey trilogy.

Here Johnson’s guileless timidity belies something far darker and more mysterious as she willingly succumbs to the witches’ grand scheme to bring new life to Madame Markos, the ailing alpha witch waiting for new flesh in order to live again. But Susan is no mere quarry in this Danse Macabre. With its stunning, emotional finale this “Suspiria” will leave you traumatized and haunted under its spell.