The director, Luca Guadagnino, known for his beautiful, aesthetic film, ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is back with a dark, gory, cringe-worthy, drag film with imagery so impressionable and disturbing that it will scare the living s#!t out of you.
Set in the late 1970s, against the politically charged backdrop of Berlin, a young American girl auditions for the prestigious Helena Markos Dance Company. Even without any formal training, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) gets selected in the company, as there is an untimely vacancy. She manages to bag the role of a lead dancer and gets into the limelight as she gets favoured by Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), a hard master.
Susie replaces Patricia who mysteriously disappears. Patricia, during her sessions with a psychotherapist, accused the matrons of the company of running a coven and practising witchcraft. She claims that ‘they’ took her blood, urine and hair.
The film is a remake of a 1977 Italian film of the same title. It runs for 152 minutes during which it manages to creep you, intrigue you, scare you and eventually bore you.
The quick-cutting montages of naked bodies, blood, guts sprawling out, hairballs, disgusting worms are disturbing and unsettling, they will definitely fuel your mystery but the imagery is gory.
The build-up is intense, but it fails to hold your interest. The end fails to live up to the build-up that it creates. It is a long tease and it keeps dropping hints about the evil the audience will face at the end. The subtext will jolt you and yell at you to pay attention to every tiny detail.
The movie is governed by female characters. The strong female energy is depicted through ‘volk’, an extreme dance form which if not performed with care can lead to broken bones. The movie has obscene amounts of nudity, however, it is not in the context of lust or with the aim to excite the audience. It is merely a symbol of curse, witchcraft, evil spirit and possession.
Beneath the dance studio, there is another glass room, where a Russian student, Olga is trapped and chained to Susie’s movements. As Susie performs, Olga is smashed against the glass walls, her body gets twisted in bone-shattering, ugly movements. Shot, choreographed and edited to the highest level of gruesomeness, the scene is almost unbearable to watch.
Dakota Johnson as Susie is somewhat tolerable but she becomes annoying by the end. She fails to capture the power and alpha spirit created by Tilda Swinton and other matrons. She carries the same innocent and gullible, submissive persona she had in Fifty Shades trilogy.
Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc is creepy and convincing, she wears anything from flowy robes to curtain dresses. She manages to nail the tough master persona. The movie talks a lot in subtexts; there are resemblances between Susie and Madame Blanc, like long hair, their mannerisms.
There is hardly any sunshine in the film. The continuous rain and cold winters convey the feeling of dread and cold creeping up in your veins. The long shots of the grey buildings against the grey clouds just add to the horror.
It is fresh to see the lack of patriarchy in a film. Suspiria also makes you realize that one doesn’t need jump scares or shrill screams to create a horror film unlike the Annabelle and the Conjuring series. Yet the plot loses its vigour and slowly dies down like your curiosity.
– Kopal
A Fly on the wall 
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