SUSPIRIA – The remake, which I saw at the Leeds International Film Festival last night. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from ‘art-house’ director (to be slightly lazy about it) Guadagnino, but it’s well known that the project has been a labour of love of his for some time. This ‘Suspiria’ feels invested in, sure, but thankfully it’s no fannish reprise. One thing I appreciated about it, and kind of predicted, was lack its of emulation of the original and disregard for the sort of stylistics that less confident hands might feel a need to cling to, Argento’s movie being basically, let’s face it, really all just style and style alone. Themes and attitudes (particularly to women, or the idea of the feminine) are different. There’s an interesting attempt to evoke what was going on politically in Berlin at the time, and we get a punkish back-drop with lots of graffiti and references to Baader-Meinhof that also allows the film to show how the embers of the Nazi past simmer in the lives of its characters. All that stuff feels a bit loose in a way because it needs a more rigorous cinematic terrain to do it justice, but the vibe of stark, ominous social realism cuts well against the original’s bad-trip fairy froth. On some level, I felt the film was going for the feel of something like Zulawski’s ‘Possession’, which you’ll remember was also set in Berlin. Nothing overt, just a sense that came through from time to time, although ‘Suspiria’ is less weird and oblique than that film. That might be its biggest failing, for me – for all its well developed textures, tones and thematic excursions, it couldn’t quite sustain the atmosphere of estrangement I was looking for. To be blunt, some of the ‘horror bits’ worked OK, but some of the visuals almost seemed to belong to a different movie and unfortunately at points they brought to mind a sub-par Netflix Insidious-rip off. Having said this, the film’s climax, an orgiastic occult ceremony doused in red lighting with cadaverous entities and exploding bodies, couldn’t have been a better homage to dodgy Euro-goth excess. In the end, ‘Suspiria – the remake’ has a lot going for it, interesting ideas, great performers like Tilda Swinton, nice textures and atmospheres in places, although ultimately the 21/2 hour run time seems a bit testing. It’s perhaps something I need to revisit on DVD, as I’m never very switched on in cinemas, particularly when my arse is going numb. I doubt it’ll resonate with anyone expecting continuity with Argento, or maybe even horror fans in general, but that’s not the point.
DEAD BIRDS – Good ‘western’-era set flick in which some thieves hide out in an abandoned and isolated house. Horror comes in the form of some bestial ghost-creatures over the course of a slow build. ‘Dead Birds’ has the atmosphere of a slowly gathering storm, and looks cinematically a lot richer than its probable low budget. Although it seems to be going for something character driven and ambient, it doesn’t skimp on gore – some nice splattery bits along with a little CGI that didn’t bother me. A film from fifteen years ago, an underexplored era in the sense that it’s neither classic nor contemporary. Recommended.
NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF – Naschy does Daninksy yet again. This time, he gets tangled in a plot to revive a long dead vampire and her inevitably evil buddies. Although set in the ‘modern age’ (well, it was made in the early eighties), ‘Night of the Werewolf’ is basically gothic in its marrow, and even the bits where eg. a werewolf stalks a couple of illegal cigarette dealers look like they’re meant to be happening somewhere in the 1800s. The film is basically a procession of gothic imagery out in search of a plot, and it’s all here – fog banks, cobwebby candelabras, carefully lit crypts etc etc. I find that kind of thing intoxicating, so although this isn’t quite peak Naschy it will still whet the appetite of most who like long shadows and monsters.
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