Continuing with this week's Dario Argento theme, our next film on the list is Suspiria, the first film in Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy and his first foray into supernatural horror.
Suzy Bannion arrives in Germany from New York to study at an exclusive ballet school. The night she arrives there is a tremendous thunderstorm and she overhears another student say something cryptic before running into the night. That student is brutally murdered later on that same night (stabbed repeatedly, dropped through a stained glass skylight and hanged), along with a friend she was hiding with. Once at the school Suzy meets numerous strange people in both the student body and the staff and, after a strange encounter with an eerie old woman and a young boy she collapses and is confined to bed. After that it's maggots raining from the ceiling, blind pianists having their throats torn out by their guide dogs, and other atmospheric setpieces, murders and general creepiness that all builds to a shocking finale.
So, once again we have a film by Argento that contains several of his motifs - most notably the theme of the foreigner in a strange country who gets embroiled in something sinister. It also has a breathtaking score from Argento's favourite prog rock band Goblin, who manage to crank up the creepy atmosphere to 11 with their music. Combine that with the Bavarian architecture and rooms, and scenes lit by red, green or blue light and I sometimes had the impression while watching Suspiria that this is what a horror film directed by Salvador Dali might look like.
It does have its flawed moments, however. I'm still not too sure there was a room full of razorwire randomly in the ballet school, for example, as skin-crawlingly horrific that scene was (although I suppose the answer could be simply, "A witch did it."). There's a sudden exposition dump about three-quarters of the way through the film that more or less equates to "Witches 101". And by the end of the film I was left wondering just how many people were a part of this secret coven - was it just the staff or were some of the students involved as well, considering their behaviour and the apparent number of people who die or "disappear" during the film (maybe it was just a bad week for the school and poor Suzy came at a really bad time?)
I'm being nitpicky though. Suspiria is a beautiful, captivating and deeply creepy film. As I said at the beginning, it is the first part of the "Three Mothers" trilogy, but because it's the first part there's no backstory or prior canon you need to know to properly enjoy the film (although there is a sly little nod to one of Argento's earlier films in the climax...)
My personal opinion is that Suspiria is the best of the "Three Mothers" trilogy, as I think it has the strongest standalone plot, the fewest incomprehensible moments and the most beautiful cinematography. But that's something to cover in more detail with the next film in the series, Inferno.
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