Review – Suspiria

I knew going into this that I’m not a big fan of Dario Argento’s work, so I’m at least partially responsible for my own bad experience here. And in fairness I was pleasantly surprised by some elements of the production. For example, a lot of the sets and shot composition are quite good, surreal in a manner vaguely evocative of the design work Dali did for Hitchcock’s Spellbound or even Poe’s thematically-colored rooms in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Unfortunately the good visuals are more than offset by the awfulness of most of the rest of the production. In particular, the score Argento composes and liberally employs sent me diving for the mute button in fairly short order. He also has a tin ear for dialogue, perhaps the result of being deafened by his own dreadful music. The plot is rudimentary: a ballet student (Jessica Harper) is admitted to an Italian dance academy beset by a coven of murderous Satanists. And of course the characters – especially the women – are murder mannequins rather than real people. And therein lies the failing of this picture from a 21st century perspective. It relies heavily on slasher sequences so over-arty that by current standards they seem quaint. Thus the movie may have some value as a historical artifact, but it no longer stands on its own two feet. See if desperate