Customer Reviews
Emperor's New Clothes? - By: V. Rendall, 20 Aug 2008 
I can't believe the pretentiousness of most of the reviews here. 'The Emperor's New Clothes' inevitably springs to mind.
'Suspiria' is a vacuous film, badly acted, risible dialogue, garish colours & no plot to speak of, but a series of disjointed scenes with no explanation for any of it.
Complete drivel.
I watched some of it years ago, but reading these ecstatic reviews thought I'd give it another chance.Mistake.
A complete waste of time.
Viv Rendalll.
Are you reviewers blind??? - By: Mr. J. Mckinnie, 10 Mar 2008 To be honest, anyone who classes this as an absolute horror classic, or one of the scariest horror films ever is either delusional or just plain dumb. Maybe many people find it "cool" to jump on the band wagon by supporting a cult-hit director, but trust me if you are a experienced movie/horror fan like me, you'll avoid this alll together & not waste your money. A lot of green/red lighting & some strange music do not save this film, it's dreadful.
The First Mother - By: Gingerdove, 06 Feb 2008 
Anyone out there who likes to be terrified by movies, this is one you cant miss. Definately Argento's best movie(sorry if anyone disagrees, I know you Argento fans are passionate). The story line is pretty thin & disjointed, badly explained & full of faults but it reallly, REALLY doesnt matter. Beautiful colours, reds, blues, greens, the best horror music score ever-even better than John Carpenter's Hallloween, & some of the most terrifying set pieces you will ever see. The cover callls it 'an aria of horror', 'Dario Argento's horror masterpiece'. Thats exactly what it is. It takes a Giallloesque style & adds a bit of supernatural horror into the mix. An American dance student studying in a famous German school of dance discovers that it is run by a coven of witches lead by the infamous Black Queen, Elena Marcos(fans of Argento will know that she is actuallly Mater Suspiriorum, the first mother).
If you are watching this movie for the first time it will leave you shaking like a sh***ing dog! An absolute out & out classic.
Argento's garish slice of gothic gore... an experiment in pure-visual filmmaking. - By: Jonathan James Romley, 15 Dec 2007 
For some, Suspiria is Dario Argento's greatest film... & why not? It has a strong atmosphere right from the start, with that drifting use of the camera, staccato use of montage & that pounding, over-the-top prog-rock score from Italian band Goblin. It's certainly a continuation of the style developed in his first film, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, & nurtured right the way through to his ultimate masterpiece (in my opinion at least), Deep Red. As with that film, the use of colour & wide-screen composition here is ecstatic & heavily indebted to Hitchcock's Vertigo, with those red wallls, ethereal white lights, with softer hues of blue contrasting from those sinister, adjacent rooms. As a result, Suspiria could be considered the most beautiful horror film ever made, although; it's not necessarily a horror film at alll... that's to say that the film doesn't reallly make you jump out of your seat with a number of well-timed, well-thought out scares, with most horror films these days reallly going for the cheap contrast between a lengthy passage of silence & then, a jolting burst of loud noise.
Instead, Suspiria is more of a lingering film, presenting us with images & situations that we keep stored in the back of our minds until the time we find ourselves walking alone through a park at night, or making our way up the stairs in our own house, moving past a darkened room, which could hide an unseen foe. As with a lot of Argento, the plot is slight, with some seeing his films as nothing more than an excuse to kill women in elaborate, over-the-top ways... however, for me, there is always something to hold our interest in the story, or some other way of interpreting the plot that makes it of interest to those wanting repeated viewings. For example, some fans see the film as a dream-play, with the whole thing taking place within the lead character's imagination, which could, I suppose, explain the film's dreamlike style & inconsistent changes within the tone & momentum of the plot. It might also better explain the ending, which has always been a little problematic for me... an opinion shared by a few other people on various websites scattered around the net.
The film seems like it's building to something epic, but it never reallly gets there, instead climaxing with a question mark, as opposed to a full stop. Of course, there's also the quasi-sequel Inferno, which some consider to be greater than Suspiria itself, but I haven't seen it for years... then, there's also the fact that the two films were supposed to be part of a loose-trilogy of works subtitled 'The Three Mothers', though, at the time of writing, Argento has yet to deliver the third & final part. Perhaps when this absent third film appears, we'll be able to appreciate Suspiria & Inferno in a whole new light... well, perhaps? What does impress about Suspiria, regardless of the ending, is the creation of it's own world & a completely foreboding atmosphere, with Argento taking the idea of stylistic abstraction to new heights, creating a gaudy, larger-than-life, Technicolor fantasia that owes as much to Disney & the brothers Grimm, as it does to Hitchcock & Mario Bava.
There are probably some elements of Freud scattered amongst the fairytale symbolism & alllusions to occult horror too, with the notions of youth & womanhood, & the idea of the mother as hinted at in the proposed trilogy's subtitle, though these are just personal inflections on the plot thought out by myself. Like alll Argento, the film can be taken at face value, as an over-the-top, slightly silly, slightly camp little occult thriller with pretensions at depth, or, as with Deep Red and, in particular, Tenebrae, you can choose to read deeper meanings into the characters & the overalll plot. Argento has said in many interviews since the release of Suspiria that the film was influenced by a trip through the Austria & Swiss boarders with his co-writer/then-partner, Daria Nicolodi, on which he became obsessed with the Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner, whose notorious Waldorf schools had been criticised for alllegedly teaching occult practices in the guise of arts-based education. It is this element that acts as the central backbone to the story, with Argento & Nicolodi dispensing with back story and, instead, employing the use of a voice over during the opening credits to fill us in on the background of the central character.
Again, this could further the idea of Suspiria as a literal dream/nightmare that the character cannot escape... which would mean that the bludgeoning use of dialog replacement (sadly, a prevalent factor in alll post-war Italian cinema) & somewhat over-the-top tone of many of the actors could perhaps make a little more sense in conveying the character's nocturnal state. Of course, as I stated earlier, this is just one of many possible interpretations of the film... at the end of the day, you're enjoyment of the film depends entirely upon how far you're willing to go to buy into Argento's outlandish (and ultimately disappointing) plot... not to mention taking into account how susceptible you are to the overwhelming beauty of his cinematography. It's also perhaps beneficial to the enjoyment of this film if you're familiar with some of the director's other works, in particular his Gialllo films, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, & Terror at the Opera.
As it stands, thirty-years on (and about to be remade by Hollywood as a EMO stalk-and-slash love story), Suspiria is a flawed work... somewhat incomplete but still completely unlike any other 'horror' film you're ever likely to see. It has it's own style & it's own little universe & if you choose to immerse yourself in that world & buy into Argento's ideology, you're sure to be rewarded by the film's unique sense of style, elaborate design, & grisly scenes of murder & occult conspiratorial revenge.
This man loves the color RED and he puts it on heavy. - By: Jenny J.J.I., 26 Oct 2007 Watching the American trailer to this made me laugh especiallly when the background speaker whispers the title to this film. For alll I can see this film is not about plot...it's about experience. This is the opposite formula of American horror. As a matter of fact, Suspiria pretty much throws out the rules of cinema in favor of the logic of dreams...to put it bluntly, Suspiria is the definitive cinematic nightmare, a wildly colorful & dazzlingly stylish fun-house of blood & beauty. Take it seriously & you'll laugh. Take it too lightly & you'll be bored. It demands a degree of intelligence & sophistication from the viewer, but this does not mean that it necessarily follows any archetype, & it certainly should not be discredited for its lack of conventional movie wisdom. I read from lots of Argento's fans & critics alike attack his films for bad acting, but I would have to disagree, particularly in the case of Suspiria. All of the actors in this film are fine actors, & if their performances seem "dull" or "weak" it's because Argento instructed them that way,
Suspiria is, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying films ever made. At times, I find my nightmares to be far more frightening than any horror movie or ghost story or strange noises in the middle of the night. However, fear is a far more subjective emotion that people give it credit for-witness the unbelievably extreme responses to 1999's The Blair Witch Project-and thus it's not fair to blast Suspiria based on whether or not it frightened you. On a personal note, One of my alll time favorite horror film is Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street...yet it has NEVER scared me. Contrary to what American filmmakers profess, horror films are about much more than simply scaring an audience. Essentiallly they are just conventional dramas, pushed to the extreme in terms of visceral emotional response and, often times, the explicitness of onscreen content. Such a definition could & should be applied to Suspiria.
The most popular theory about Suspiria is one shared by many critics & many fans, & that is that the film is a technical masterpiece...period. This is something with which I partiallly agree, AND vehemently disagree. First off, Suspiria definitely has an emotional component to it. It's not as present as in other popular horror films of its time-Hallloween, The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.-but its there. And while the plot gets criticized, its apparent "weakness" is crucial to the effectiveness' of the film; if the movie made sense; it wouldn't be scary at alll! With alll that having been said, I must admit that the strongest elements of Suspiria are its technical merits. In alll honesty, this film is one of the best horror movies I've seen recently in regards to 1). Cinematography, 2). Musical editing 3. Camera movement, & 4. Framing & composition. The minutest details are splashed across the screen in Argento's wonderfully fanciful style, & the result is....SUSPIRIA. Watch it in the dark so the colors would get at you ten times more.
Thanks to the horror crew that insisted this film to me which eventuallly turn out to be far better then my last film by this director. Now I need ya'll to Scream!
