Category Archives: Reviews

Anna and the Apocalypse (2018): Music, Teenagers, and Zombies – It’s That Time of Year!

In a small English town, Anna (Ella Hunt; The More You Ignore Me) is a high school senior with her eyes set on forging her own path once school is over. As her father drops off her and her best friend John (Malcolm Cumming), they accidentally reveal that she is planning to travel the world instead of going to college after graduating which leads to a huge argument. At school, her classmates are preparing for the annual Christmas pageant that she intends to miss so she can pick up an extra shift at the bowling alley and pay for her upcoming trip. Oh, and there’s also a virus outbreak spreading that turns everyone into zombies. That’s important too.

The overall production can feel a bit amateur. There are a few larger scenes with surprisingly elaborate special effects but the majority of the film is limited to small sets that make the apocalypse feel confined and localized to the few buildings shown rather than a widespread issue. The acting also shows a lack of experience. The performances aren’t terrible but the overeager delivery combined with an often cheesy script can make the characters seem like dweebs. Eventually the earnestness of the dialogue wears down the initial annoyance. This is best exemplified in a scene where two boys argue about which of their favorite celebrities are still alive during the outbreak. When the dialogue is at its most inconsequential, and not in service of moving the plot forward, the characters feel natural and the social awkwardness becomes endearing in spite of the spotty acting.

The few flash mob style dance numbers are energetic and fun.

Director John McPhail and screenwriters Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry capture the tedium of high school. Several films have characters that are tired of their mundane small town life, but these filmmakers focus on the dopiness of Anna’s high school experience. At the Christmas pageant, two students wearing penguin costumes sing an original, pun-laden song called “The Fish Wrap” while dancing, or rather attempting to dance, hip hop. This is easily the best/worst song of the year, even better/worse than “Why Did You Do That?” from A Star is Born, and the hilarious track shows how unaware the rest of her school is of their own ridiculousness.

The music as a whole is more catchy than it has any right to be. Early tunes like “Breakaway” and “Hollywood Ending” are not only great songs, but are also relevant to the Anna’s motivation to leave her town and, unlike many recent musicals, all of the cast can actually sing. The music is also often a source of humor with puns, innuendos, and a great use of contrast between singing and the apocalyptic surrounding events. However, the tracks are not uniformly at this quality level and the strongest songs all play in the first third which leaves the film’s later music paling in comparison. Many of these songs also have accompanying dance numbers. At best these can be entertaining and at worst they are borderline High School Musical quality, but the effort is appreciated. Anna and the Apocalypse isn’t without its flaws, but the often catchy music and endearingly awkward characters balance out the lack of production polish.

3/5 stars.

Green Book (2018): Class, Race, and Unexpected Depth

Green Book is a film that immediately raises some red flags. Being released late in the year with a well-worn setup, respected actors, and a positive message about race relations, it, on paper, reeks of Oscar bait. While some of those initial assumptions are not entirely false, the film expands beyond blatant awards pandering. The story could be viewed as a new Driving Miss Daisy with the races swapped, but it has more on its mind to say. Viggo Mortenson (A History of Violence), proving again that he is one of the few actors able to completely lose himself in his roles, plays Tony Lip, a New Yorker who gets a short-term job acting as post a driver and bodyguard for Doc (Mahershala Ali; Moonlight), a pianist, on a concert tour through the Deep South.

As characters, Tony and Doc fall into several stereotypes. Tony is a blue-collar Italian everyman. He works as a bouncer at nightclub, eats spaghetti and meatballs, and feels like he just walked off the set of Goodfellas. Doc is an ultra-posh artist with a doctorate that lives in an expensive penthouse and interviews drivers while sitting on a literal throne. Together they create the required odd couple whose relationship begins as purely professional before gradually developing into a mutual friendship as they drive further into the South and face more racism.

The early impressions quickly give way to Tony and Doc’s deeper emotions. Doc’s mannerisms are, at first, annoyingly haughty. He enunciates his language to a degree that makes him sound pompous and even hold his head titled slightly upwards as if he is too dignified for everyday people and the behavior bothers Tony until Doc’s motivations are revealed. The fact is that no matter how talented, successful, or educated Doc may be, to many of the people he meets in his travels, he is defined by his race and the racist stereotypes they believe in. This crucially recontextualizes his behavior as a defense mechanism, not a sign of arrogance.

Despite the serious subject matter, there is still plenty of humor when Doc and Tony spend time together.

Tony’s realization of the difficulties Doc regularly faces are expected, but the film also sheds light on some of Doc’s unique struggles. Upwards mobility is a core feature of a fair society, but Doc has to suffer the related consequences. His education and success as an artist affords him a luxurious lifestyle, but at the expense of emotional belonging. He spends his nights drinking an entire bottle of hard liquor alone in his hotel room because he no longer fits in with society’s expectations. He is, as he puts it, too white to be black and too black to be white which leaves him in a friendless state. This is an unfortunate result of social climbing that is rarely discussed in media and the film deserves praise for touching on this subject.

The biggest surprise is that the film is directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly. He and his brother Bobby are best known for creating comedies like Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary which makes Green Book a radical departure. In his first solo outing as director, Farrelly shows the restraint necessary to paint the story with a finer than expected brush. The theme of overcoming societal differences and initial prejudices is predictable, but the performances from Ali and Mortenson and the unexpected depth make Green Book an effective odd couple road trip with a commendable message.

4/5 stars.

The Favourite (2018): Scheming for Favo(u)r

In the early 1700s, while Britain is at war with France, Queen Anne (Olivia Colman; Tyrannosaur) has health issues and only a passive interest in actually ruling the nation. Her close companion and advisor Sarah (Rachel Weisz; The Lobster) manages her affairs until their relationship is interrupted by Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone; La La Land) who, while acting as Sarah’s attendant, gains favor and influence with the Queen. Alongside their personal rivalry is a larger political struggle over the direction of the current war with party leaders trying to use Abigail and Sarah’s positions to advance their own causes.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) nails the look of the film. Shot on location in large estates or palaces in England, the high ceilings and lavish interiors make the Queen’s existence feel both opulent and oppressive. The director again uses wide, almost fisheye, lenses that slightly distort the environment and, doing the inverse of The Killing of a Sacred Deer, place the camera at low heights, emphasizing how small even royalty feel in the cavernous setting. It isn’t pure extravagance though. Lanthimos never lets the audience forget the grimy living that supports the upper class with Abigail’s story. She falls into mud, scrubs floors, and sleeps in the uncomfortably crowded servant’s quarters. Her initial situation is unsavory to say the least, but is also casually dismissed by Sarah while she simultaneously reprimands everyone for the slightest error in the Queen’s care. The extensive period detail creates an unmistakable class divide and fuel for Abigail’s ambitions.

The cinematography makes the royal estate an imposing setting.

It is a joy to watch Abigail and Sarah plot against each other. Both prove themselves to be master manipulators of the Queen and know how to manage the competing political parties. Sarah starts the film with near complete control of the Queen, telling her what she can and cannot do and often speaking in her place for important political meetings, yet Abigail is able to pry open an opportunity to reach the Queen. While Sarah acts as an almost matriarchal authoritarian, Abigail takes a softer, kind approach to win the Queen’s affections. Stone and Weisz masterfully convey the intellect and determination needed to continually surprise and outmaneuver each other. The moments where they spend time together with the Queen can lead to hilarious expressions when the women are forced to act cordial despite their thinly veiled contempt.

The director’s trademark delivery and style are still present but don’t meld as well with the writing. Characters speak in Lanthimos’ ultra-deadpan, unemotional delivery that continues to distinguish his works from any other filmmaker. The manner of speech often results in unexpected humor when characters read what should be impassioned speech with cold distance, but the dialogue seems less suited to this approach that his prior releases. The Favourite is the first film Lanthimos has directed that wasn’t written by him and his co-writer Efthymis Filippou and this may be why his vision feels less effective. There are fewer lines that take advantage of this diction which reduces the frequency of laughs. The chess-like scheming is exciting to watch unfold, but the script doesn’t take full advantage of Lanthimos’ signature acting style resulting less humor than desired

3/5 stars.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018): Moody but Disjointed

Following up a Best Picture winner is never easy, but Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) makes an admirable effort with his latest film. If Beale Street Could Talk, based on the novel of the same name by James Baldwin, follows a young couple and the difficult situation they find themselves in. Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James; Race) have known each other since they were kids. Tish works selling perfume at a department store and Fonny works a day job while sculpting wood at night. As young adults, the two fall in love and make plans to start a future together until Fonny is imprisoned for rape after which Tish realizes she is pregnant.

Visually, Jenkins makes some major strides. Moonlight was heavily influenced by the cinematography, lighting, and pace of Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) but Jenkins steps firmly into his own style here. He still continues with the emphasis on mood and textures onscreen, but has additional flourishes. He uses overhead cameras, circling movements with heavy use of contrasting shadows, and uncommon framings. Several scenes have the character’s head centered in the frame directly facing the camera similar to a headshot. This is a composition typically rejected by filmmakers as it breaks the idea that the audience is a fly on the wall observing the plot. Jenkins instead uses it to emphasize intimacy. He reserves these scenes for dialogue that plays like personal confessions between lovers and the effect is penetrating. He places the viewer in the middle of the heated emotions, literally.

The emphasis on mood is the film’s greatest strength. Characters speak in hushed tones often through sad, aching faces and it gives scenes a disarming sincerity. This is especially true of the romance between Tish and Fonny. The tone captures the comfort and safety their bond offers and makes their struggle empathetic. Despite the potentially insurmountable odds and issues of discrimination, the film doesn’t fall into pure gloom. Fonny’s family looks to their love as a guiding force through their hardships and the use of hope rooted in love overcoming adversity tinged with the melancholy of reality strikes a subtle balance.

The tender chemistry between Tish and Fonny gives the film a strong emotional core.

Yet, this subtle approach is undermined by some blunt messaging. It is revealed immediately that Fonny’s incarceration is a result of racial prejudice by the arresting police officer and systemic injustice in the criminal system. As a representation of a greater plight of so many, Tish and Fonny’s story would have been deeply affecting, but when Jenkins explicitly points out, through onscreen text, that the story represents the experience of many others, he cripples the intimacy of the story. It, along some with similarly overt dialogue, makes the film feel colder and didactic when it could have been personal and impactful on a visceral level.

The impact is also lessened by the story structure. The film makes heavy use of flashbacks and constantly cuts back to scenes of Tish and Fonny’s burgeoning relationship. The scenes themselves are fine but the editing style breaks up the flow of the film. It makes it difficult to become invested in events happening in the present when the needed background is being filled in ad hoc instead of being presented early and gradually built upon. While the visuals and general mood of the film are strong, If Beale Street Could Talk’s disjointed editing and unnecessarily blunt messaging prevent it from reaching its otherwise high potential.

3/5 stars.

Everybody Knows (2018): Farhadi Without the Moral Ambiguity

Somehow switching from language to language, despite not being fluent, Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) has made his second non-Iranian and first Spanish feature. The film boasts a powerhouse cast with Penélope Cruz (Volver) as Laura, a Spanish native visiting from Argentina with her daughter for her sister’s wedding, Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) as Paco, a family friend who she has a complicated history with, and Ricardo Darin (The Secret in Their Eyes) as Laura’s husband Alejandro. The film begins with a wedding celebration that is interrupted when Laura and Alejandro’s daughter goes missing.

The depth of the family connections are immediate. In a flurry of hugs and kisses, we see siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends warmly embracing each other in the sunny Spanish countryside. With little exposition, the mutual affection is established and the picturesque setting and upcoming wedding celebration are almost enough to make you forget that this is an Asghar Farhadi film and that something is about to go wrong. Yet, the seeds of future arguments are hinted at early on. Farhadi’s favorite theme of class divide is made apparent as certain characters talk about their financial difficulties in contrast to the relative success of others and more complicated histories appear to exist beneath the exterior of the welcoming smiles.

The happiness of the initial reunion is skilled misdirection for the events that follow.

The kidnapping leads to long buried secrets being revealed. Since the crime happens during a family gathering, the potential suspects are all loved ones. Past relationships, both personal and professional, resurface to complicate matters and the visible strain the search for the culprit puts on the family bonds is effective. Laura is torn between her love for her family and facing the reality that one of them may be using her daughter, their relative, to extort money from her. Each person she would normally turn to for help is a potential suspect and the mystery creates suspense until the true culprit is finally revealed.

Plot-wise, the film is closest to About Elly, but it falls short of that high benchmark. Both stories follow a young woman who goes missing during an otherwise carefree event, but as Farhadi’s signature plot intricacies reveal themselves, there are a few crucial differences. In the best of Farhadi’s works (About Elly, A Separation, and The Past), he takes a familiar situation and injects a conflict with seemingly endless perspectives where each character’s actions are flawed, but their motivations and thought processes are understandable. In Everybody Knows, the conflict is decidedly less complicated. The relationships are still layered and interesting, but the central event is an actual crime – meaning there are clear villains. These characters may have depth to their motivations, but their extreme actions are never forgivable. In previous films, Farhadi would design his plots so that the central conflict and the ensuing consequences were unfortunate outcomes of humanly flawed thinking that put the viewer in a state of nail-biting moral confusion. There was no one to root for when everyone made mistakes. In structuring his newest film as a whodunit, Farhadi has removed the moral ambiguity and weakened the previously gut-wrenching effect of his trademark multilayered relationships and plot reveals.

3/5 stars.

Piercing (2018): Rigorous Aesthetics without Psychological Depth

A married man with a loving wife and an adorable infant daughter has one tiny guilty pleasure: stabbing people. Coming from Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother), the story centers on Reed (Christopher Abbott; It Comes at Night) as he plans and initiates the killing of a prostitute to satisfy his unnatural desire. The unsuspecting victim is Jackie (Mia Wasikowska; Stoker) who enters his hotel room expecting a night of S&M. The film is adapted from a novel by Ryu Murakami, author of the book that would become Takashi Miike’s Audition, so those familiar with his previous work have an idea of the kind of twisted events about to play out.

For fans of Pesce’s first film or of Murakami’s novel, the tone is going to be jarring. The source material was serious and psychological. It focused on the past of the main characters and provided deep insights into how childhood trauma and abuse can manifest in adulthood. The film is much more playful. It’s in the vein of movies like You’re Next that offer genre thrills but are self-aware of their own ridiculousness. Pesce takes Reed’s planning of the attack and turns into comedy by having him pantomime the act with a silly level of earnestness. But he doesn’t allow the humor to completely mask the actual violence. He includes unpleasant sound effects for each movement to remind us of the danger at hand. This is a movie that, while gruesome in several scenes, you are meant to have fun with and laugh at.

The clothing is another unplaceable aspect of the film’s style.

The film’s production design is stunning. Pesce has relocated Murakami’s story to the United States but sets it in an unknown location. He uses miniatures for the city landscape that communicate an fabricated world, one that, due to its stylization, is out of place and out of time. The technology shown indicates the story in set in the past, but the exact decade is deliberately obfuscated. Pesce uses a variety of stylistic choices to prevent the film from being grounded. The interiors have green shag carpeting and glistening wood-paneled walls that are from the 60s but the bright colors used call back to Italian giallo movies of the 70s and make the sets feel like dollhouses. The untraceable, artificial setting gives the film a strange, fable-like quality.

Pesce shows clear vision in his adaptation, but his choices often lessen the film’s impact. The film feels meticulous in its planning and execution and the subdued but unsettling acting fits perfectly with the intended tone, but the lack of psychological elements rob the story of its depth. Reed and Jackie’s histories are hinted at through well-executed but fleeting flashbacks yet this isn’t enough to add motive to their behavior. Instead, we are forced to react only to their actions onscreen, removed from the important context of their pasts that was previously present in the novel. The actions, particularly the violent ones, are well executed as Pesce knows how to make an audience squirm when he wants to, but without a grounding motivation. Piercing can be enjoyed for it rigorous details and Pesce’s laudable vison, but the lack of character development prevent the film from engaging on an emotional level.

3/5 stars.

Non-Fiction (2018): Comedy for Literary Intellectuals

Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) has made a genre shift with his newest film. Instead of deep dramas, Non-Fiction is a comedy. The film involves four main characters: a book publisher (Guillaume Canet) and his actor wife (Juliette Binoche; Caché) and a writer (Vincent Macaigne) and his wife who works in political campaigns (Nora Hamzawi). Each has their own, often interrelated, mini-crises happening, both personal and professional, and they provide the background to the film’s main focus: conversations between educated and opinionated people.

Compared to Assayas’s recent work, Non-Fiction has surprisingly poor visuals. No one expects a comedy to be visually arresting, but the lackluster images are extremely noticeable since Assayas’s past two films were well shot. Part of the problem may be that his previous two works were shot on 35mm film while Non-Fiction appears to be shot digitally and likely has a lower production budget. Digital cinematography has to potential to be gorgeous but many scenes here suffer from blatant visual flaws. An early lunch scene has noticeable digital noise with blue dots speckled in darker regions of the image. Other scenes are outdoors and are completely blown out. It doesn’t help that the film’s sequences typically revolve around sitting at a table. The many conversations are filmed with very rudimentary shot reverse shots and only the occasional handheld camera circling the cast’s dining table to mix things up. They don’t ruin the film, but the poor lighting and cinematography is often distracting.

Hamzawi’s pragmatism is charming and hilarious.

The comedy can be uninvolving at first, but it grows on you. The jokes are subtle and come fast and furious to the point that they are easily missable, especially early on. Then, because the of the film’s literary focus, the comedy feels insular and pretentious, like a bunch of writers and publishers arguing theory with little practical purpose, but eventually this subsides. As the characters are developed, their histories are exposed and we see the fragility beneath their grand debates. All of the performances are strong, but Hamzawi emerges as the breakout. In contrast to her husband, she is practical, direct, and efficient. When her husband tells her that his book has been rejected by his longtime publisher she responds “What do you want me to do? Cry?” Her blunt responses are hilarious and the fortitude of her character is incredibly endearing. Even the other, more flawed characters have depth that drives their actions and the comedy.

Overall, this is a very French film. The majority of the movie is spent with characters eating, drinking, and, most of all, talking. People debate literature, technology, and several jokes rely on literary or film knowledge. Assayas prevents this from becoming haughty by subtly undercutting potential intellectual superiority. When esoteric references are made, it is implied that the character hasn’t actually read or seen the title they namedrop. Hypocrisy brings these bourgeois people back down to earth. The humor isn’t strikingly original or uproariously funny, but the film keeps maintains a healthy rhythm of laughs and even uses personal failings for brief moments of introspection. It’s a lighter work than his previous films, but Non-Fiction is still an enjoyable comedy for fans of talkative movies.

3/5 stars.

Border (2018): Pointlessly Strange

A peculiar looking woman named Tina (Eva Melander) works as border security in Sweden. She possesses a preternatural sense of smell that allows her to literally sniff out smugglers. She doesn’t just smell food or drinks they might be hiding, she can smell guilt. She lives in a small house in the woods with a man that isn’t her significant other, but also not quite just a roommate either. One day she smells something wrong with a man, Vore (Eero Milonoff), who seems to share her physical features. Eventually she befriends him and offers to let him stay in her guest house. The film is based off a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist who also wrote the novel Let the Right One In which was later adapted into two successful films. With these two films, Lindqvist has demonstrated his interest in loners and fairy tales. Let the Right One In had an isolated child bonding with a centuries old vampire and in Border we have a woman dismissed for her appearance who discovers that she is a troll – literally.

Initially, Tina’s sense of smell is intriguing. She seems like she might become some type of unconventional superhero a la Unbreakable. A subplot of this story does explore this idea as Tina assists law enforcement with a difficult case and it becomes the most interesting part of the movie. She is shown to be a kind person, despite how she is often treated, and would be an investigator worth rooting for in a crime story. But this is not that kind of film.

Tina and Vore’s romance isn’t the draw that Abbasi wants it to be.

Director Ali Abbasi (Shelley) uses Tina’s appearance to examine an outsider’s perspective. Tina has spent her life believing that she was an ugly person, disregarded by society and loved by only her father. In early scenes, Abbasi frames Tina by herself, gazing into the distance. He quickly establishes her isolation, but too much of the film is spent on these and other slow scenes of little value. It isn’t until Vore enters the picture that Tina realizes she is of another species. Vore explains that everything that made her different, her looks, her sense of smell, and the long scar on her lower back are related to her being a troll raised as a human. This revelation frees her from the negative labels she had absorbed. Her response to being nonhuman is contrasted to Vore’s. Tina hasn’t been treated well, but she harbors no ill will towards others while Vore has a militant pro-troll mindset. Through them we see how people can react to rejection and mistreatment and how these experiences can bind similarly outcast individuals.

Their shared trollhood eventually grows into a romance that, while believable, doesn’t have chemistry. It is touching to see Tina’s behavior change as she feels belonging for the first time, but the actual attraction between her and Vore has problems. Vore has a suspicious, almost predatory edge to him that makes even his kind praises seem dubious, but her attraction to him seems like a foregone conclusion. He is the only other troll so naturally they get together. Abbasi spends a significant amount of time on their relationship, but it, like the film in general, doesn’t have a payoff. The slow pacing and subdued acting make the film drag on until its unsatisfying conclusion. We’re left wondering why all the strangeness and deliberately unconventional plot details were even necessary when the final outcome is nothing special.

2/5 stars.

The Hate U Give (2018): A Message in an Average Film

Whenever movies like this are released, the distinction has to be made between the film and the message the film is trying to communicate. The two exist together but are often, as is the case here, of differing quality. Starr (Amandla Stenberg; Everything, Everything) is a 16 year old black girl that lives a poor, crime-ridden, predominantly black neighborhood, but goes to a private, mostly white high school. When coming home from a party with her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith; Detroit), she is stopped by a white police officer. He asks her friend, who was driving, to step outside and stay still while he checks their license plates. Khalil doesn’t listen and is shot dead when reaching for his hairbrush. The shooting and subsequent trial create unrest in the community and divide Starr as she wrestles with her role and the different reactions she receives from her friends at school and her family.

With a clear point to get across, the script wastes no time on subtlety. The characters shown and the way they fit together fall into easy stereotypes. The good kid turned drug dealer to pay for his grandmother’s cancer treatment, the former gangster gone straight to raise his family, the conceited rich kids, and more clichés are stacked together to remove any chance of an audience member having a thought that strays from the film’s goals. With every element of the plot so conspicuous in its intentions, the machinations of the narrative are clear and the artifice of the story becomes apparent. The writing can be manipulative to the point that it prevents the characters and the plot from feeling realistic and lessens the film’s impact.

The supporting characters are too stereotypical to matter.

There are additional problems that stem from the transition from book to film. Angie Thomas’s novel relies heavily on voiceover to show Starr’s inner thoughts. When used to depict the split personality Starr is forced to adopt just to fit in, this device works well. We are able to understand and sympathize with her lack of identity due to the two worlds she inhabits and how it can be exhausting. Sadly, the film doesn’t just limit voiceover to this purpose. It’s often used for exposition dumps. This is especially egregious at the film’s conclusion where Starr’s narration ties up every loose end in an act of blatant telling, rather than showing.

At its heart, the film wants to spread a message against hate. The title come’s from rapper Tupac Shakur’s “THUG LIFE” adage and the story seeks to humanize the frequent news headlines of killings and police brutality. Its greatest weapon are its the actors. Stenberg has an incredibly expressive face and she uses it to believably convey a broad range of emotions. Her father, played by Russell Hornsby (Fences), is a tough but loving patriarch. His strictness comes from learning difficult lessons and wanting to ensure his children never have to do the same. When seen together, Starr and her family create the emotional center director George Tillman Jr. (Barbershop) was likely intending. They show how regular, good people cope when subjected to adversity caused inherent systemic flaws present in their neighborhoods and society as a whole. Had the film carried this humanist angle in the script, it would have been influential without feeling calculated. As it stands, The Hate U Give has strong performances, but a manipulative plot that weakens the effectiveness of its message.

3/5 stars.

Suspiria (2018): Promising but Flawed Remake

Remaking a cult classic is never an easy task, but having Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) behind the camera made it an interesting proposition. Like the original, the film follows Suzy Bannion (Dakota Johnson; Fifty Shades of Grey), an American, who comes to Germany to enroll in a famous dance school. On the day of her arrival, she hears whispers of another student who abruptly left the school for unknown reasons, leaving room for Suzy to join. She auditions in front of the demanding teacher Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton; We Need to Talk About Kevin) who, along with the rest of the staff, takes an immediate interest in her and assigns her the lead role in their next performance. As the film progresses, Suzy’s friend Sara (Mia Goth; A Cure for Wellness) learns that the missing student had suspected their teachers of being witches and using students for an unknown nefarious purpose.

While the original Suspiria was almost a giallo film, the Italian thriller subgenre popularized by director Dario Argento, Guadagnino has moved the title firmly into body horror territory. There are still elements of suspense surround the details of the missing student, but where the first film kept the nature of the school as its main source of intrigue, this iteration never lets the audience think the school is normal. Instead, the question becomes a matter of what Blanc and company are doing and why, not whether it is occult. In early scenes, Guadagnino establishes the teachers as witches through a display of horrific pain. He shows a body contorting against its will in a grisly fashion that would make David Cronenberg proud and continues these effects throughout the duration.

Guadagnino takes the film’s visuals in the opposite direction of the original. While it is beautifully shot with skillful use of shadow, it lacks the color of the original. Argento’s Suspiria was known for its vibrant, contrasting hues and patterned production design. Guadagnino instead creates the aesthetic of Cold War Germany. The buildings are oppressive with dull, muted colors that point to a city in disrepair. The effect of this aesthetic change is that it not only distinguishes the film, but also places greater emphasis on the actual dancing. The energetic dance moves come to the foreground when surrounded by drab settings. It’s a smart decision that gives the remake its own visual identity.

The main performance is a brilliantly lit and choreographed scene.

Until the end, Guadagnino’s Suspiria is a compelling watch. He makes decisions that separate his film in interesting ways and is able to communicate the hypnotic effect of dance that lures Suzy to the school. The film becomes a sensory experience led by Johnson’s striking dancing. Her movements resemble sudden convulsions more than graceful ballet and her twisting, in concert with the film’s lighting, show a temporary euphoria that extends to the audience. It’s unclear how much of the choreography was completed by Johnson rather than a dance double, but her performance and the editing make it impossible to tell as she throws herself into every motion.

It’s the film’s climax that becomes its undoing. Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash) deserve credit for taking the story in a new direction, but the blood-soaked finale will leave most viewers confused rather than awestruck. The ending relies on a plot point that, while not convoluted, unexpectedly changes the film’s focus to something that was barely mentioned earlier. This isn’t a shift that recontextualizes prior events in new and interesting ways, it baffles by implying that the filmmakers were actually focused on what seemed like an inconsequential detail. There are also other background elements that end up superfluous. The repeated nods to WWII and actions that may have been committed under Nazi rule are never developed or addressed by the film’s conclusion. What started as a fresh and enveloping take on a classic film, stumbles and falls in its final stretch leaving Guadagnino’s remake a flawed work that never reaches its potential, despite having many great moments.

3/5 stars.