Night 19 of 31 Nights of Horror

The only thing I knew about this movie before watching it was that it was set at a ballet school, and I only knew that much from the promos released when the re-make came out in 2018. Unlike a lot of the other films I’ve watched this month, I’d never even seen the box for it at any of the video stores I’ve worked at.

Written and directed by Dario Argento, the look of Suspiria is unlike any horror movie I watched before. Most other films in this genre are dark and somber, but Suspiria is filled with bold vivid colours that dominate the scenes. The play of light and shadow is fantastic and does a lot to set the tone and mood. More so than the music, which I found too loud and confusing. It was filled with moans and wails and I often couldn’t tell if it was the music or something that was in the scene.

As gorgeous as the cinematography is, the visual effects don’t hold up as well. The blood is a bright cartoony red that no one could ever mistake for the real thing and there is a scene with a bat that looks exactly like the black tennis ball on a string that it probably was.

I still enjoyed it overall, and I find myself wondering if this may be a case where the remake actually improves on the original, but I may wait for next year’s marathon to check it out.