31 Days of Halloween Films #5: Suspiria
The Lowdown: Some chick decides to go to ballet school, except for it’s not only a ballet school, it’s also a witch school. Or the ballet dancers are witches. Or something like that. People die in brightly colored rooms throughout.
The Breakdown: The Italian Giallo films aren’t as well received in America, probably due to the fact that overall they are not very good, overall. For the most part, these types of films tend to be light on plot and heavy on concept and style. While watching one, you do not question the fact that every room is a different neon color, or that the performances are wooden and way over the top, you just let it flow. You could say, for an easy comparison, that Pulp Fiction is to crime drama what Suspiria is to the Giallo films. For what it does, Suspiria executes flawlessly, being that its’ directed by arguably the greatest director of the genre, Dario Argento. From solid kills to a creepy coven of witches, Suspiria delivers tenfold.
The paper thin plot is centered around a young woman eager to do well at her new ballet school. Pretty soon after she gets there, she starts to notice things are a bit off about the instructors. Yep, you guessed it, they’re fucking witches. Bummer. None of this really matters outside of getting our lead actress through several set pieces, one early in the film involving another woman falling through and being impaled by some stained glass. It is a cool sequence that displays the films’ willingness to push the style way beyond the substance. You also have to appreciate the fact that Argento chose to have the bad guys be witches. There simply are not many films that use witches as the antagonist and I, for one, am glad he used them rather than demons vampires.
Suspiria is a the type of film you really need to sit down and watch to appreciate because it is such a visually striking piece of cinema. The script is bare, the performances are adequate, but its’ place on my regular Halloween watchlist is there because of its visual strength. In the span of ten minutes in this film, you go from neon green to deep blue to searing yellow, almost as if you’re watching the visual representation of a color wheel. I worked on an independent feature once that attempted to employ these color schemes and it was only after my experience there that I truly could appreciate the achievement Argento’s cinematography is in Suspiria.
The Comedown: Suspiria is a love it or hate it horror flick. It is cheesier that most, it is unapologetic and delivers thrills for those seeking them. I highly recommend Suspiria for anyone looking to get a fresh and oddly chilling take on the horror genre. Without giving anything away, the movie does a great job creeping you out in subtle, yet effective, ways and certainly climbs high on my list of favorite horror films, especially in October.