Suspiria (2018)

Suspiria (2018)

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloe Gretz Moretz, Jessica Harper 

I remember back when there were such a thing as video clubs, I saw the VHS box art for Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977). I thought the art was very weird and artsy for a horror film, but what always caught my attention was the films catchphrase on the box which read “the only thing more terrifying then the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92”. I always wondered if it was actually that scary. Of course, years later when I started to explore Italian horror films, I discovered that Argento’s Suspiria was one of horror cinemas best supernatural thrillers. A beautifully shot piece of atmospheric, supernatural filmmaking. And indeed, it was a spooky tale about witchcraft with an intense ending. But nothing could prepare me for Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Argento’s film! I mean, remakes by norm already carry a certain amount of hatred towards them, even before they are released, people come into theaters already hating the film. Me, I’m one of those that gives remakes a chance, because there’s that off chance that it might be one of the good ones. And who knows, maybe it might even be better than the original. The buzz around this one was so good, almost too good. So, how was this remake of Suspiria? Did it live up the hype?

Jessica Harper in a scene from the original Suspiria (1977)

 For those who haven’t seen the original Suspiria, this is a tale of witchcraft and dancing. You see, the story is all about this young American dance student who ends up following her dreams of going to a dance school in Berlin. When she gets there, she gets more then she bargained for when she realizes she’s not just in any dance school! 

The thing about Argento’s Suspiria is that it isn’t just a horror film, to me it’s an exercise in gloomy atmosphere and a work of art. The color palette alone, filled with Argento’s trademark primary colors, is a beauty to behold. On top of that, it’s surreal, it’s hard to define. Sometimes you don’t know exactly what you are seeing, but you know that you feel something and that something is freaking you out. My worry was, how was this remake going to top that? Was it going to duplicate Argento’s film or take a road all its own? Well, I’m happy to inform that it took a road all its own and I have to commend director Luca Guadagnino on this because he really did a great job of doing something different, yet familiar.

Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton

Yes we get the same basic premise, the giant, brooding dance school in the middle of the the never ending rain. Yes it’s run by witches…but there’s a bit more depth to it, there’s a bit of the socio-political background to the story. There’s a revolution going on in Berlin in the background and some of the dancers are involved. The color palette is entirely different, instead of being drowned in Argento’s vibrant primary colors, the film seems devoid of color and life, so that when there is color it pops out! It adds to the dreary vibe the film carries  throughout its entire running time. I loved that sustained note of dreariness. The overall tone is way more horrifying and serious. Where the first film felt sort of like a fairy tale amongst immature dance students behaving like little girls, here we get this deadly serious dance school where you are lucky to get admitted into. While Argento’s feels like a colorful, feverish dream, this one feels dreadful, sad and deadly serious. So in terms of tone, we get a very different film. 

 Yet it retains a lot of what works from Argento’s version. For example, the surrealism. Though for me it felt way more intense on this new version. The dreams and nightmares are way more horrifying. The death’s that occur in the film are more intertwined with the themes of the film: the dance and the witchcraft. Somehow Guadagnino managed to mix witchcraft with dancing and it works amazingly well, especially in one magnificently graphic death scene. And speaking of the graphic nature of this film, well, it’s really out there. I mean, the film is slow paced, a slow burner for sure so be ready for that. But when it decides to turn up the fire, get ready because it turns up the fire to hellish temperatures! And by hellish I mean the fiery pits of hell itself! The gore on this movie is really magnificent, spectacular. 

 And just like its 1977 counterpart, this new Suspiria holds no stops in banging out an amazing ending! Seriously speaking my friends, this films ending will blow you away. I’m not going to go into any details so that you can experience all the horror for yourselves. And yes, I said horror, not jump scares/teeny bopper horror, but true horror. The kind that makes full grown adults cringe in disgust and terror, the kind that's bizarre, just plain bizarre. The kind of bizarre that oozes off of the screen with intense and pure evil! I swear I could feel the evil pouring out of the screen. It almost feels wrong to watch! But you won’t be able to stop watching. Because in a weird twisted way, it is also beautiful, as the film also addresses. There is something meta about the dialog in the film, I felt it was also talking about art, filmmaking and the nature of horror. If anybody else felt that, please comment on it below.  There’s beauty in all this horror! So there you go my friends. My review for Suspiria. The film that Quentin Tarantino saw and personally congratulated the director after watching. I mean, there’s a lot of naked feet on this movie so I get that. Plus it’s divided into chapters just like a Tarantino film. But aside from all the Tarantino love this movie got, this movie is a good example of what a great, epic horror film should be like. It should leave us scared and disturbed long after we leave the movie theater. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 

A Cure for Wellness (2017)

A Cure for Wellness (2017)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth

A good place to start this review would be by mentioning that director Gore Verbinski was at one point attached to direct a film based on an extremely popular and successful video game called Bioshock.  Strangely enough I finished playing all three Bioschock games last week! I was so hooked, I had no social life for a while. I played all three games back to back! Upon finishing the Bioshock trilogy I was left with the notion that these games would in fact make fantastic movies and that if Gore Verbinski, a director I’ve come to admire, was going to be the one helming the film adaptation, I could rest assured It would be good adaptation. Sadly, just eight weeks before the film was to begin shooting, and after much pre-production, Universal got cold feet because Verbinski wanted the film to be a hard ‘R’ rated violent film and the studio didn’t want to risk 200 million on a big budget horror film. So Universal Studios pulled the plug on the project. Apparently Verbinski really had an itching to make that film because here comes a not surprisingly similar idea in the form of A Cure for Wellness (2017). So are the rumors true? Is this film heavily influenced by the game? And video game connections aside, was the film any good?

A Cure for Wellness tells the story of a young businessman named Lockhart, who is sent by his superiors to bring back his company’s CEO. You see, the rich old man went on a trip to the Swiss Alps to visit a ‘Wellness Spa’ and ended up never coming back. Lockhart’s mission is to bring him back at any cost because the future of the company is hanging on the balance of this one mission. The mysterious “spa” is rumored to have these curative waters, which can heal people, and quite possibly, give them immortality! Is it all on people’s minds? Or is there something else at work here? Will Lockhart ever return from the Spa that no one returns from?

So yes, the film does in fact have many, many things in common with Bioschock. It has leeches, it has lighthouses, it has crazy old people hell bent on “perfection” and beauty. It involves the idea of sucking the life out of people, so yeah, fans of Bioshock will find a special delight in seeing this film because it is in fact sort of like a Bioschock film, without the more expensive elements of the game, like having an entire city underwater. But even though it does have similarities to these games, it’s also very much its own thing. Video games similarities aside, the good news is that I truly enjoyed this creepy as hell movie. It’s the kind of old school horror film that does not in any way rely on jump scares, or cheap loud noises to creep you out.  Nope, these scares are well orchestrated my friends! The last time that Gore Verbinski took a stab at horror was with The Ring (2002) and I remember being blown away by that one the first time I saw it in theaters. It was a PG-13 horror film that showed me that when a filmmaker truly tries, the PG-13 rating doesn’t even matter! Of course, when a film is R rated you can go further and Verbinski really milks his ‘R’ rating in A Cure for Wellness. There are some truly gruesome bits here, but there’s also the intensity of the very adult thematic elements.

Verbinski gives the whole film this classy vibe, this felt like an old school horror film. How refreshing is it to see a horror film not aimed at teenagers? Where there isn’t a comic relief character saying stupid jokes after something frightening happens? I thank the horror gods that finally, here’s a horror movie through and through, trying its hardest to creep you out by slowly building on the terror and the paranoia, instead of treating us like idiots. So my hats down to Verbinski, this felt like a true horror film. It sinks you into the horror and then goes further, darker. The atmospheric elements on this film were handled splendidly. I notice how hard Verbinski was attempting to hold onto that dreadful atmosphere all the time. He made sure there were gloomy clouds, lonely hallways, creepy looking characters, a dreadful color palette. To me the best horror films are those that don’t let go of the atmosphere, as an audience, we like to stay in that spooky world and we want that spooky vibe all the time, and on this film we get it. From the spooky castle at the top of the hill, to the gloomy weather and the spooky ghost like young girl that looms around the spa, Gorvinski was trying to evoke doom, dread and isolation. He achieved it in my book. From a visual standpoint the film is fantastic. Verbinski succeeded in creating amazing visuals with this one. Like Kubrick, you could pause many moments on this film and they’d feel like a painting. There’s a lot of play with colors on this film, but not the kind that pop out, instead this film shows us muted colors that send the image of death and decay to our brains. And if its not grimmy dirty, its neat and almost too perfect. A clinical sort of perfection, which augments how some of the characters search for it.

And speaking about the films influences, well, they were all over the place. Starting with the most obvious one: Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973). A Cure for Wellness definitely follows that formula  in which the main character is falling into the spider’s web, little by little. He doesn’t realize what he is getting himself into until it is too late. It brought to mind other films like Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Martin Scorcese’s Shutter Island (2010) and even Roman Polansky’s Rosermary’s Baby (1968), the latter when it comes to the music on this film, which is perfect on certain scenes. So yeah, I loved it to death. It’s a film that explores the very nature of religion and why it exists. Why are people afraid to leave a cult? Why do we end up feeling like religion will save us? Why do we search for it? Do we need it? So here we have a film that plays with important themes, it’s not just another empty horror film. On the downside, the film does run for two hours and a half, I personally didn’t mind them because I find this theme fascinating, but I’m sure some audiences will grow impatient. My best advice would be to go into it expecting a slow burner that at the end will be worth the trip. At times I felt it was going too slow for its own good, but then bang, it reeled me in again. I saw it last night and ended up dreaming I was in that damned spa! Also, I feel like a second viewing is needed to truly absorb this one, it has a lot of story to it. Basically, I was a satisfied costumer with this movie.

Rating: 4 out of 5