8 Mysterious Horror Movies That Give Nothing Away

The two Surpiria movies we've been gifted from the cinematic overlords are very different, but they both draw from the same pool of weirdness that is Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi's original screenplay. Where 1977 is a vivid, jangling puzzle to be pieced together with witchcraft brewing at the edges, the 2018 version takes little time to hide its magical trappings, with each building a world where a coven are channelling power through a dance school and have Suzy Bannion in their sights for their grand, wicked schemes.

Whilst both films do outright tell a story, they don't make sense without some grasp on the source material. Argento's story is born from Thomas de Quincey's essay titled Suspiria de Profundis, released in 1845, that describes that there are three Sorrows that curse humanity with depression, grief, and despair - envisioned as Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears, Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs, and Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness.

The original Suspiria in particular feels like an audio-visual experience to define witchcraft rather than an outright exploration of the coven that live in the dance school, with De Quincey's work looming over the project yet never being dissected in any detail as Our Lady of Sighs attempts to come back to her full potential.

The three mothers trilogy goes into more detail on this, but even in the new remake - there's far more power, ritualistic practise, and hidden secrets that are never explored in any detail. Darkness lurks under the surface as to Bannion's true intentions, but the how and why of her getting to her final form is as much a mystery as to how the witches came about in the first place.