Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton to Star in ‘Suspiria’ Remake?

While master Italian filmmaker Dario Argento came to prominence on the strength of his giallo pictures — a micro-genre referring to a spate of stylish slasher flicks that poured out of Italy during the ’70s — his greatest achievement of all runs along more straight-up horror lines. His 1977 classic Suspiria sent an American ballerina to an elite academy of dance in Frieburg, but of course, all is not what it seems. Her instructors seem weirdly intense, even for ballet coaches, and because you shouldn’t have to append a spoiler alert to a movie that came out nearly forty years ago, I’ll go right ahead and reveal they’re witches intent on preying upon their nubile charges. It’s a phenomenal achievement of mood and style, with Argento’s mad experiments in color and design still captivating underground audiences to this day.

As such, the news of an upcoming remake of Argento’s nightmare fantasia might be cause for concern. But things are off to an awfully auspicious start; during a Q&A yesterday with filmmaker Luca Guadagnino at an Australian screening of his latest film A Bigger Splash, he announced some exciting new plans for his Suspiria remake.

According to a firsthand report from Melbourne-based critic Alex Heller-Nicholas on Twitter, the film will reunite Guadagnino with his A Bigger Splash stars Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton (presumably, as the American ballerina and her witch instructor, respectively). He plans on moving the setting from Freiburg to Berlin, and turning the clock back to 1977 in a bid to emulate the retro feel of Argento’s original. He hopes to land composer John Adams to draw up an original score, having previously collaborated with him on the accompaniment to his 2010 film I Am Love. And perhaps most intriguingly of all, Guadagnino has claimed that this Suspiria remake will somehow be the “most Fassbinderian” of all his films. It’s easy to be wary of horror remakes, but if this list of personnel doesn’t at least slightly reassure us, nothing will.