10 Horror Movies Critics Were WAY Too Harsh On
2. Suspiria (2018)
When it was announced that Luca Guadagnino was attempting a remake of Dario Argento's 70s masterpiece, horror fans were understandably skeptical. Argento's technicolour nightmare broke so much ground in its visual style that another director would struggle to come close to it and attempts would most likely end up as an anachronistic mess.
"This isn’t an atrocity on the level of, say, Rob Zombie’s Halloween - but it is a horror designed to test your patience rather than your nerves." wrote Kim Newman.
Guadagnino, however, wisely does not attempt a remake - here is Suspiria 2018, a unique piece of art that knows to follow its own path - and what a road that is.
Set in 1977 (the year the original was released) and positioned against the backdrop of Baader-Meinhof movement that dominated Berlin that year, Suspiria 2018 sets itself up as an essay on determinism, in a way that explores in much greater depth the themes that Argento had cribbed from Thomas De Quincey's 1821 literary work Suspiria De Profundis.
The framework of the original is kept and expanded on; Susie's (Dakota Johnson) enrolment in a ballet school running as a recruitment centre for young witches and the power struggle within the coven to elect a new leader to replace the ancient, decrepit Madame Helena Markos.