Review: Suspiria Is a Beautiful, Brutal Descent into the Witches Den

The great innovator of modern choreography Martha Graham called dance “a song of the body, either of joy or pain.” The new film Suspiria (opening October 26) sings both. Luca Guadagninos feverish reimagining of his countryman Dario Argentos 1977 film is possessed of dual furies, the ecstasy of youthful exploration—all that thrusting into the unknown—crashing into and entwining with old, angry spirits, howling out of the past, hungry for reprisal.

Guadagninos Suspiria grounds itself in 1977 Berlin, gray and pouring rain, at the height of the German Autumn, when the Red Army Faction ran amok in violent protest of authoritarianism. A Lufthansa jet has been hijacked and bombs shake the city. Thirty years after Nazism, Berlin still rattles in its terrible wake. But thats mere background noise for Susie (Dakota Johnson), a young American whos traveled across the ocean to audition for the the Markos Dance Academy, a revered institution steeped in the expressionist tradition of Mary Wigman and Graham—modernists who saw that dance could be much freer, more visceral than the ordered codes of ballet.

The Academy is in a state of tumult. Its founder, Helena Markos, is off somewhere, unwell, while a dancer, Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), has gone missing. Susie, reactive and ambitious, finds opportunity in these absences, quickly working her way to the center of the group, where she has the watchful attention of the companys second in command, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). As Susie bores deeper into her art, the scene around her grows ever stranger and more sinister. Guadagninos film reels and jumps and glides as it descends into witchy madness—all while making a funny sort of sense.

Suspiria is ostensibly a horror film, about a coven of witches preying on young innocents in a quest for immortality, or supreme power, or something. And it delivers on that front, trading in both the elegantly ominous and the grindingly grotesque. One scene, in which an apostate dancer gets her punishment, is the film at its most gruesome, this story of bodies and becoming suddenly breaking one of its cherished vessels. That gnarly sequence skirts the line of exploitation, as any giallo homage is wont to do, but I think Guadagnino keeps things just barely on the right side of that fraught line.

Guadagnino is ultimately telling a tale of actualization, of agency violently claimed and asserted. Suspiria is a coming-of-age film, about a young person stretching into adulthood while rooting herself—finding herself, really—in an old tradition, one thats carried on in shadows, hidden away from the known narratives of civilization, but ever-present. In that way, this could be seen as a coming-out film, too—less direct than Guadagninos Call Me by Your Name in some senses, but less evasive in others. A grand declaration of self has been made by Suspirias gory, helter-skelter climax, a sureness of identity that Elio of Italy never quite arrives at. (Maybe he will in the sequel.)

Its no accident that Susies exploration of an adopted spiritual heritage is happening when it is. More than the original, this Suspiria considers the jagged arc of history. There are frequent updates about the Lufthansa hijacking seen and heard on televisions and radios, reminders of the strife roiling the world beyond the Academy. That doesnt necessarily make the wild stuff going on within the vast, creepy building that houses the dancers seem any less brutal or wicked, but it does contextualize it. Theres a chord of anger crescendoing in the film, one whose source we keenly feel, understanding it as women reckoning with a bloody era wrought by men. I love the acute Berlin-ness and 1977-ness of Guadagninos version, the way the film staggers and dances in the dreary, long fallout of war, its stabs of beauty thrashing out through an uneasy gloom.

And there is such beauty! The photography has a rich grain to it, looking old but not slavishly so, without any retro gimmick. The films spaces—its cramped offices and lonely bedrooms and echoing rehearsal halls—are all credibly realized. Theyre textured, worn, haunted by human activity. Though the film trends toward the surreal, Guadagnino keeps its stage distressingly real. That these frightening things could happen in these drab but stately places makes it all the more unnerving.

The dance is a wonder as well. Choreographed by Damien Jalet, the movement pieces thud and writhe and strain with a ritualistic thrum, summoning up a primal something thats scary, but vital. Johnson is an adept dancer, as are the rest in her company. The films big performance, done in dim light with costumes of thwacking red string, is a mesmerizing conjuring, as much a testament to the power of the art form as to the specific intensity of Guadagninos film. Suspiria is a gorgeous paean to the artists who wailed and beat and pled throughout the 20th century, sensitive receptors interpreting so many grim signals.

Amidst all that, Guadagnino maintains a wry smile, infusing a harrowing film with just the right amount of camp. Swinton is, as ever, a hoot. (I dont like her quite as much in heavy makeup playing an old psychiatrist named Josef, though.) But I was even more taken by Angela Winkler as a bob-cut administrator who emits an officious menace. The film is so cleverly populated, from Johnson (sly and alert as ever) to Winkler to Mia Goth as an increasingly suspicious company member. They all enjoy a sense of play without turning the whole thing silly. The shivery crazy moments land, and a surprisingly emotional beat at the close of the film does, too. As nutty and off-the-wall as Suspiria is, it has a firm sense of control and proportion. Its a loose and rambly thing thats also tightly made, somehow.

Suspiria wont be for everyone. Its drawn comparisons to last years polarizing Mother!, another gonzo horror movie (of a sort) from a celebrated filmmaker. But Mother!s thematic observation looks flat as a pancake compared to the robust swirl of ideas and allusions teeming in Suspiria. Of course, that doesnt mean the film will appeal to more people than Mother! did. (It may even mean it will appeal to fewer.) But its nonetheless a far richer experience, a holistic journey into the witches den that prods at the dark seams of our world. It titillates and startles and, perhaps most disturbingly, inspires.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.