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Amazon Studios has just released the first official trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming Suspiria remake, and it actually looks pretty good!
Suspiria, as a classic of supernatural horror, has few equals in the genre. It made Dario Argento an icon (with very little more than Inferno and Opera keeping him there), using surreal lighting and a bewitching soundtrack to drive an absolute fever dream of a film off the screen and into viewers’ heads.
The trailer is naturally sparse, giving us mostly worried expressions and a decaying village with some shots of dancing and hints at the horrors that wait along the way. There’s some blood and maggots, so that’s at least staying true to the original. But I haven’t seen a room full of barbed wire, yet, and a movie just isn’t Suspiria without a room full of barbed wire.
This looks to be a more subdued interpretation, or at least not so overtly horror from the offset. There are beautiful shots of the Gothic interior of the dance school, but the lighting focuses more on darkness than color. The soundtrack, as well, though tense and unsettling in its own right, lacks that iconic layer that the Goblin theme contained.
Still, there’s nothing wrong with the movie cutting its own path. Remakes can get too caught up in nods and winks and forget to just be good movies on their own. And this looks like it will at least be a good movie. And if the Cinemacon reaction to a girl being ripped apart as another dances is any indication, we’ll be in for a treat.
We’ll find out for sure in November, when Amazon releases Suspiria in theaters.
