Suspiria

Rating

Director

Dario Argento

Screenplay

Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi (Book: Thomas De Quincey)

Length

1h 39m

Starring

Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bose, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axen, Rudolf Schundler, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett

MPAA Rating

R

Review

Over the years, horror has gotten a bad reputation as being purely a mass-entertainment genre. This seems obvious when looking at all of the franchises and sequels that permeate the medium. Thankfully, a handful of directors have managed to make the case for horror as a genre capable of great art and innovation. Suspiria is an example of one such departure from the norm.

Suzy Bannon (Jessica Harper) is a promising ballet student who arrives in Freiburg to attend a noted German dance school. Amidst a downpour, she is denied entry and must find lodging elsewhere. Meanwhile, a student of the academy escapes into the night and seeks refuge with a friend. There, she reveals that something sinister is happening at the school. They are killed in most creative and bloody fashion. Without knowing the details of these events, Suzy returns the next day and is shown around the school where one of her fellow students sets her on the trail of the mysterious occurrences. She ultimately finds that there is something sinister and frightening to the goings-on that are taking place behind closed doors. As the film progresses, talk of the supernatural becomes a part of the events the audience must unravel the mystery and although they are given plenty of clues to connect the dots, the finale remains as suspenseful and horrifying as the rest of the film. It’s a dazzling film even if it teeters frequently on the edge of absurdity.

The film is modestly reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s seminal horror work Rosemary’s Baby and drives the audience to a frenzy with creepy music, oblique angles, and screen compositions that display an effortless understanding of the cinematic medium. If all you’ve ever known of star Harper is her role as the baritone Janet from the ill-fated Rocky Horror Picture Show sequel Shock Treatment, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find how effective she is as the skeptical ingenue attempting to unravel the movie’s strange occurrences that begin the moment she arrives on the school’s doorstep awash in a blood-red light.

As a director, Dario Argento’s style has been defining voice in the giallo horror subgenre since he stepped onto the scene with his directorial debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, a title that ties into this film’s plot with a crystal peacock figuring in a pivotal moment. The Italian genre rose to popularity from the mid-1960s through the 1970s. Built around simple and complex murder mysteries infused with slasher violence and eroticism with occasional occult influences, Suspiria is one of the pinnacles of the genre even if its detective fiction elements don’t quite line up with the cheap detective novels that originally influenced the genre.

Although giallo horror hasn’t had the enduring popularity of other European-centric film movements such as Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave, it has its importance in the influence it gave to the American slasher genre that began its own rise as giallo started to decline in popularity. As much as Suspiria is a seminal film in the realm giallo films, it stands as a testament to the artistic merit of the whole of the horror genre. The genre is incredibly popular and that popularity has often been used to diminish the whole of films within it. Yet, Argento proved with his amazing eye for frame compositions and thematic tension that his work can be seen as art as much as it is a piece of pulp entertainment.

There are certain directors who can make the case for the genre being more than its populist roots. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Polanski’s aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us each make a tremendous case for the consideration of horror as something more than a pleasing and increasingly gory genre. There’s opportunity for great art. Even going back to the films of James Whale (Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein), there has been a creative undercurrent in horror that transcends what popular entertainment has typically come to be seen as.

Referring to the genre as little more than dismissible entertainment is reductive. It ignores the rich and varied history of films the genre has produced, many of which stand as great works alongside those in less diminished genres, genres that have their fair share of populist and uninspired offerings. Suspiria is a film that demands reconsideration, not because the genre in which it is created is unworthy, but because those who are so contemptuous of all of those features cannot comprehend how anyone can find beauty in situations so repulsive and abhorrent. Humanity can be violent, brutal, and horrific and by ignoring that in favor of cinematic purity is a mistake.

Review Written

August 7, 2022