Suspiria: A Horror Classic
Happy Halloween the second everyone. Or something. I'm not very festive in general and it's honestly a character flaw of mine.
Anyways, I don't usually celebrate Halloween and I'm not a horror fan, but I have been wanting to expand my horizons. So I'm gonna look at four things of the spooky and/or scary variety this month, starting with the 1977 classic, Suspiria.
Suspiria is a 1977 horror movie about a mysterious German ballet-school and a string of supernatural murders, at least that's what the tin says. It doesn't really ever drift from that - closer inspection does reveal more about the "Why" and the "How" of Suspiria, but for me in 2020, it's a single concept executed well, created by director Luca Guadagnino and crew, but also also the year 1977. You should go watch it, because I'll be talking about it and what it meant to me here.
Here's a link.
Okay, so once again let me preface this by saying that I'm not anyone with any standing in terms of movie criticism, and especially not horror. I have my theories based on trends on past horror vs modern horror but they are not backed up sufficiently - I also won't be talking about that here. I just watched this scary movie that reminded me of other scary things and my two braincells saw a pattern.
That being said, I don't think the movie Suspiria is all that hard to understand. A modern equivalent would be something like Get Out or Hereditary, where the fear is crafted from societal elements.Suspiria is obsessively strange in every way, from the English dubbed voices to its extreme color palette. For me, the tension came less from the drama of the actual movie and more from the curiosity of what the movie was going to show me next. All three of the major kills in this movie are both creative and cruel in their set up and execution
The opening scene is a sequence in which a confused, delirious student runs into the home of another, seeking shelter from some unknown pursuer from the school. After a short back and forth, the confused student rests in the bathroom only to be gruesomely murdered by some unseen force. It's a tone setter, to say the least. Following this, we get to the actual school.
It's at this point in the movie where I confirmed to myself that the voices were all indeed dubbed over- at least in the version I watched. And the overall voice acting, by today's standards, is questionable at best. People don't quite emote properly, it doesn't quite match their faces or their gestures, making every single character feel disconnected in a way that's downright eerie.
The plot doesn't really progress in Supiria, it more so happens. Our protagonist is curious of goings on in the school and she does make efforts to investigate, but the movie isn't focused on stopping anything or solving a mystery. She talks to some guy about the possibility of the supernatural, and then it's revealed that the whole school is a weird witch-cult thing. Sarah gets attacked by the corpse of her only friend, she stabs an invisible person and then escapes, laughing while the school goes up in flames.
But what is it about?
Honestly, I wasn't sure on my first watch, it just kinda seemed like a psychological horror flick, a really efficient one. with it's hour and a half runtime. It could also just be that. The protagonist questions authority, authority tells her to shut up so she meanders into her own answers. That's probably the lesson at the end of the day, which is a little cut and dry, which is reasonable as Suspiria is seen as a genre defining movie. But, to give that lesson a little more detail - Suspiria is about not trusting authority during the 70's. It's a movie about the Cold War, at least in some part.
Watching part of the remake is what solidified this opinion in my head- the original is loud and straight to the point while the remake meanders a lot with set dressing and world building. Suspiria 2018 is a movie that wants to tell you about the 70's, while the original is from the 70's. It's like a game of telephone, Suspiria 2018 isn't the original.
It's a German school, a few decades after the end of World War 2, meaning Germany is divided by the Berlin Wall. As a history reminder, the Berlin Wall's purpose was to separate the Soviet run East Germany from the West, which was occupied by the US, Great Britain and France. The murderer is invisible the whole time. I don't think it's too insane to say that Suspiria is about the Cold War.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, go check it out and tell me what you think. Or don't, I'm not your boss.
---
Hey, thanks for reading! I'm kind of losing steam on the blog lately because I've been going really hard at freelancing. I'm really trying to make writing a thing I can living off of, wish me luck!
I hope you continue to read the blog, next week I'm going to play the indie video game, Darkwood because friends have been badgering me to do it.
-DrowZ
Comments
Post a Comment