Suspiria (2018) – Film Review

Young American dancer Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) arrives in 1970s Berlin to audition for the world-renowned Helena Markos Dance Co. When she vaults to the role of lead dancer, the woman she replaces breaks down and accuses the company’s female directors of witchcraft. Meanwhile, an inquisitive psychotherapist and a member of the troupe uncover dark and sinister secrets as they probe the depths of the studio’s hidden underground chambers.

Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria is one of the most bizarre, deeply unsettling, maddening, frustrating, and confusing movies I have ever seen without a shadow of a doubt. It’s a two and a half hour slow burn that makes you feel like you’re losing your mind, similar to how our protagonist Susie feels.

It’s a film that is absolutely going to divide millions of moviegoers and I can almost guarantee that everybody who watches it will walk away with a different interpretation of the events that transpired in the story. That, to me, is absolutely beautiful. A truly excellent film should make you want to talk about it to someone as soon as you leave that theatre or as soon as the end credits roll on your favorite streaming website.

One of the biggest examples of this happening to me in the past few years was with Alex Garland‘s Annihilation – a movie so trippy, strange, confusing, and yet so fascinating that, as soon as I left theatre, I started to text some of my film fan friends about their thoughts just to see if they had interpreted the ending the same way I did.

They did not.

Suspiria will certainly invoke the same kind of reactions from people. It’s an extremely messed up film that does’t hold your hand. It thrusts you into the darkest depths of the mind and turns off all the lights, forcing you to walk around and explore Guadagnino’s mind.

Spoiler alert: it’s twisted.

From the beginning all the way to the end, Suspiria is a brutal and unforgiving movie. Oftentimes, we will watch Dakota Johnson’s character Susie dancing and performing an extremely intricate routine, and all of a sudden, Guadagnino will thrust a short clip of somebody’s body getting contorted beyond recognition on screen before cutting right back to Susie.

It’s small moments like this that truly make Suspiria stand out. We are left to wonder what in the world we just watched and if they’re ever going to explore those scenes again. Sometimes, the film does dive a little bit deeper whereas other times, it does not. But even when it doesn’t, it’s not frustrating because the film as a whole is just so captivating.

And just like Ari Aster’s films, Guadagnino’s Suspiria only gets more insane as the film progresses. If you, like me, watch the first hour of the film and think to yourself “there’s no way this will get any crazier,” you’ll find out fairly soon that you are dead wrong. The final hour and a half of Suspiria is pure nightmare fuel.

The filmmakers definitely wanted to make the final act one that audiences will never forget, and I have to say that they succeed immensely. You will be hard-pressed to find a final act that’s more disturbing, maddening, and sickening than Suspiria‘s. The phrase gets thrown around a lot, but for this film, it needs to be said – watch it if you dare.