Review of Suspiria (1977) by James S — 18 Dec 2009

Director Dario Argento clearly let his imagination run wild with Suspiria as the effective result is like a bad dream being committed to celluloid. Like most dreams, it is at times incoherent and seemingly random but like most nightmares, it features a lot of scary imagery and confusion.

The set up is mouth watering for any fan of horror movies - a young American girl arrives at a European ballet school to find it's actually a cover up for a coven of witches, at a time when students are disappearing.

Even from the word go, there is fantastically scary imagery and Argento's use of shocking reds and flashes of light make it all seem the more frightening as well as being soundtracked by a real fingers down the blackboard style of music.

There are a number of excellently scary sequences in Suspiria which wring the viewer out for every bit of eye bugging tension they can. The gore, and there isn't that much, looks especially dated which spoils things somewhat these days but for the time, it must have been very effective.

One or two moments could have been better and there isn't very much on the way of character development. There is plenty of promise in the characters but none of it really gets explored enough for us to really care about them.

The grand finale comes as something of a let down after building up a great back story in the time honoured old professor imparting the wisdom of legends bit, so the film kind of splutters to a halt rather then going out with a knock out blow.

Suspiria is disjointed and scrappy in parts but extremely scary and down right freakily weird in others, much like a nightmare should be.