Review of Suspiria (1977) by Mario H — 28 Aug 2010

Suspiria opens with a narrator describing the main character. It's that strong male storybook voice, you remember those tapes when you were kid? Disney audio? Famous Five? Any of those kids audio books, you listened to them before bed, and if you had nightmares you could listen to them for a bit before going back to sleep? You'd hear that voice, and feel safe? That is the voice this film opens with reassuring you that there is a narrator here, a narrator to project you from the evil that lurks within this film. But alas, the narrator fades out in mid-sentence never to reappear again. We are left totally vulnerable and alone.

The opening scene has to be one of the most menacing scenes ever. A girl on her way to ballet boarding school on a rainy night seems like she could be slashed to pieces at any given moment. Even the electronic sliding doors at the airport seem like blades ready to slice and dice.

The film is about an American girl who goes to a ballet school in Germany and the night she arrives there a girl who has been expelled recently is murdered in one of the most haunting and menacing murder scenes I have ever seen in a horror film. After that she and another girl she befriends try and work out what is wrong at this school. Something doesn't seem quite right.

This film is very well put together, director Dario Argento puts aside his usual excessive amounts of blood and gore (that's not to say there isn't any) and let's his skills as a director flow. The lighting and the camera work are spot on, and that together with spine-chilling music and the super creepy sets make you feel like there are ghosts lurking in the walls.

The acting I thought needed a bit of work and the dialogue was just a bit cheesy in places and I thought that it should have been in Italian but flaws aside it is still one of the most atmospheric horror films I've ever seen and I recommend it to all fans of the genre.

This gets 4 stars from me.