Critics reviews

A funereal pseudo-realist drama about political upheaval and the violence of systems that’s at odds with itself.

It would have probably been less bothersome if Guadagnino had just Xeroxed [Argento’s] Suspiria.

Guadagnino's attempt at historical memory is worth consideration as an object of 2018, a year in which, to paraphrase Susie Bannion, we have reason to believe that the worst is not yet over.

The aesthetics of Argento’s B-grade trashy glory being irreproducible, this second Suspiria is sleeker, cleverer, more refined, without ever reaching the punk-rock rawness of the original, and without the clarity of its propos.

All of this would be tolerable, and maybe even enjoyable, if Suspiria ultimately said something. The delight of horror as a genre, after all, is that it grapples with and unsettles the nature of our reality. Yet Suspiria gestures towards potential avenues of genuine interrogation, only to pivot around before the investigation begins to bear fruit.

One might accuse it of having more motifs and metaphors than measurable depth, but that seems to be intentional; it replaces the perplexing, surface-y pleasures of the original—the screaming colors, the Goblin score, the Disneyland-after-dark atmosphere—with its own brand of maximalism and mystification.

It’s less a remake than a variation on a theme, one with its own sensibility, aesthetic, and power to remind audiences that not all boogeyman are men.

Guadagnino's film could have been an indication of how far we've come in considering such matters over the last four decades. Instead, it takes what's obviously meant as a subversion and likewise leans into the very themes it seeks to transcend.

It’s full of disconnected, static, but attention-getting, details of vast historical import, and these adornments’ function is far more insidious than mere virtue-signalling or pride. They are bait for critical vanity, handing critics toys to play with, toys that can be defended as educational while offering little substance and less thought.

It can only be to this movie’s credit that I care enough to keep wondering: What was it trying to do? Did it succeed on its own terms? Why did I find myself admiring nearly every external element of the film—performances, lighting, editing, costuming—and yet find Guadagnino’s extremely aesthetically pleasing assemblage of these same elements into a whole somehow drab?

Guadagnino updates the plot with horror-movie clichés and modern political conceits. Horror movies are generally felt to express suppressed desires, but Guadagnino’s Suspiria is an epic that shows the feminist fear and loathing rampant in today’s politics.

Guadagnino seems more interested in making you recoil while also saying Something. What precisely he wants to say amid all the carefully choreographed bloodletting and disembowelment chic is unclear, other than some women are beautiful and erotically beguiling but also mysterious and murderous.