Director: Luca Guadagnino
Year: 2018
Country: Italy/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Witchcraft
Plot:
Leaving New York for Berlin, an American dancer enrolls in a prestigious, world-renown dance academy and begins to study there, but the more she continues her studies the actions of the teachers and students around her convince her that something sinister is lurking within the shadows of the studio's walls.
Review:
This was quite the impressive and remarkable remake. One of the strongest elements of the film is the stellar work accomplished towards building up the threat of the witches' cult. The opening scene depicting the dancer retelling her belief in the cult coming for her in an exceptionally crazy manner as she recalls being tormented by the witches who are stealing parts of her body for a strange ceremony starts this on a strong note that gets better throughout here. The initial scenes of her with the students at the academy are spectacular, dealing with the idea of the backstabbing dancers as well as those who aren't and trying to legitimately get by in the studio who start to plant the early idea of something wrong with the teachers with the domineering manner in which they push everyone or handle the students.
This leads into the film's most celebrated aspect of the witchcraft angle involved. With the setup rather well-handled, this one moves into a wholly original concept of utilizing their dance routines at the studio as the ritual that are to be performed, which is a genuinely creepy concept. That causes a large part of the sequences here with the way each of the dancers are shown to becomes physically ill or attacked almost immediately after engaging in a class, even sometimes the very one who was shown to be heavily involved in the tutorials during that time really actually makes the dancing a rather fearful idea where it shows each of the coven-members to positively react to their performances and giving this a really enjoyable tone overall here.
That in turns manages to setup a series of celebrated and exceptionally creepy witchcraft-based scares. The first attack of the girl in the room of mirrors being manipulated, distorted and bent into a variety of excruciating positions due to the dance routine she's performing offers a chilling opening mark on what's being accomplished, while the shorter scenes of the dancers being overcome after a recital offer up some decent attacks. However, the main sequence in the underground chamber housing the witches and their coven members is a truly outstanding sequence with the nude dancing, tortured victims and the rest of their servants tending to the decayed witch, offering all the fun gore and haunting imagery this could've asked for.
The cast here for the most part is solid enough. Dakota Johnson as lead Suzy Bannion does okay, giving us a naive and innocent in this madness who does okay with the dancing scenes but not much beyond that. She seems overwhelmed by everything and doesn't have any real say in what's going on at the academy as she just does the dancing while most of the other dancers tend to investigate matters so her change at the end doesn't make much sense. Playing all three roles here is a mixed bag for Tilda Swinton, as playing Madame Blanc and Helena Markos are certainly quite impressive roles within the academy as the sinister intentions are just below the surface, yet the disgraceful job of Dr. Klemperer is an embarrassment and should've been cut from the film to also cut down on the running time. The rest of the cast stand-out as being fine enough whether it's innocent dancers or sinister cult members. These here are what hold this up overall.
There are a few problems to be had here. The main issue here is the exceptionally overlong running time that goes on far longer than it really should. This one has an extreme inability to recognize the fact that many scenes here aren't needed at all, ranging from the scenes of the doctor back in New York doing his studies that doesn't provide anything of any real importance in the story making the shots of him walking through the city, looking over notes or handling the visitors who show up at his residence all tending to make this run on longer than necessary. Likewise, the setup with the missing dancer who supposedly died in the city-wide bombing raids is a full-on cheat with no real purpose other than to give us several scenes of them trying to suppose their city-wide influence but not much else which simply eats up the running time, much like the dancers out eating together or the various language lessons she gets throughout the film.
The other real issue to be had here with the film is the fact that, for supposedly high-end dancers none of the performances here were all that spectacular. Most of the scenes at the academy showcase their attenpts at instructing her through the course of the steps required to perform the dances, a facet that she should've already mastered should she by studying at the academy. As well, the supposed showcase they undertake on stage really isn't that impressive, consisting of a series of random chaotic movements while decked out goofy makeup and stringy costumes hacked up with scissors that don't look like professional outfits at all and really rendering the entire sequence wholly unfulfilling. That goes hand-in-hand with the atonal music chosen for the sequence and really helps to make it underwhelming, combined together to lower this one.
Overview: ****/5
While there's plenty of engaging content within here and a lot of genuinely intriguing elements, these sit alongside some massive flaws that do hold this back somewhat. Give this a chance if you're interested at what it turned into, willing to look at it on its own terms or a fan of the creative side, while unwilling to forgive it's existence due to the original should decide if it's worth looking into for themselves.
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