Suspiria
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 0.5
Susie (Dakota Johnson), a ballet dancer from Ohio, goes to train in Berlin under Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton, who plays three roles) but slowly discovers there's some weirdness going on and that the female instructors might just be witches. I admit to not being all that impressed with the original by Dario Argento, but somehow this manages to be even worse: Guadagnino has yet to find a story he couldn't drag out unnecessarily, and there's some feeble attempt to tie the demonic nonsense to the Red Army Faction (in the 1970's) and, of course, the Nazis (yes, them again). There's some geriatric nudity (if you're into that sort of thing) and heads that explode when Dakota becomes some sort of monster (while a nice Thom Yorke song plays on the soundtrack), but Sylvie Testud's character does the right thing: she stabs herself in the neck so she doesn't have to be a part of it anymore. To re-write a line from the script: "This is vanity. This isn't art."
