Blu-ray Film Review

Suspiria (2018) • Blu-ray

A darkness swirls at the centre of a dance company… that engulfs the artistic director, an ambitious dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist.

This new Suspiria could never compete with my formative experience of watching the original. I knew that even before I saw Luca Guadagnino’s reinterpretation. Fortunately, it’s different enough to make any comparisons redundant. Nearly everything that made the original such a successfully scary assault on the senses is absent in Guadagnino’s take. He described his version as more of a homage than a remake and, taken on its own merit, it has plenty to offer.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite different enough to remain entirely unhampered by the legacy of the film that inspired it. I missed Goblin’s adrenalin-pumping electronic music, with its prolonged use of sampled sighs and croaky choral interludes. This time around, Thom Yorke’s debut film score serves up a suitably contemplative soundtrack that certainly helps to lay on the gloom but replaces that visceral excitement with a sort of downbeat melancholy that, no doubt…