Luca Guadagnino made a splash recently with the arthouse homosexual romance Call Me By Your Name, which transcended its independent roots to become an Oscar contender, taking home a trophy for Best Adapted Screenplay. Guadagnino's films to date have been lush international excursions of the heart, so his next film is a bit of a headscratcher, though one that we find to be extremely intriguing. The director is remaking Dario Argento's 1977 Italian horror Suspiria, using his muse Dakota Johnson in the lead. And by the looks of this initial trailer, things are going to get quite unnerving.
Impossibly, Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake actually looks like it was filmed in the late 1970s, and kept in a secure case until the director was ready to show it to a modern audience. There isn't a single line of dialogue spoken in this clip, and yet the mood of the piece is conveyed through disturbing imagery and the use of Thom Yorke's original musical compositions. Yes, that Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame.
You can spot similarities and differences in Luca Guadagnino's approach to Dario Argento's original Suspiria, but the bones of the narrative structure appear to be in place. Susie (Dakota Johnson) is a talented ballerina who arrives at a world-renowned dance academy, to work under the tutelage of artistic director Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). The director has said numerous times that this is not a straight remake of Argento's masterpiece, but more of an effort to capture the intense feelings that he had while sitting through Suspiria the first time. It's the type of movie that burrows under your skin, and stays there for some time. And while this initial trailer doesn't give away the whole game, there's enough unnerving footage in the back half to convince us that things are going to get very weird when Amazon Studios puts Suspiria in theaters.
This is the second bit of footage that Amazon has tipped regarding Suspiria. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year -- during a luncheon, for God's sake -- the studio brought a clip of Dakota Johnson dancing, under the watchful eye of Tilda Swinton. In a separate room, another dancer was going through similar ballet moves. It was as if the two women were connected. And yet, as Dakota's dance routine intensified, the other woman found herself being injured by invisible forces. Her body was being ripped apart, and the gore was a spare-no-vomit-inducing approach to body horror.
So yeah, Suspiria will not be for the weak-willed or delicate stomached.
Amazon Studios plans to release Suspiria in theaters on November 2, where it will compete against Disney's Nutcracker and the Four Realms, an untitled Tyler Perry movie, and Fox's Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. Stay up to date on all upcoming movies by bookmarking our 2018 Movie Release Schedule.
