Suspiria is another film by Dario Argento, director of another recent bit of viewing - Phenomena. Mr. Hall and I thought this would be a perfect film for some Halloween-viewing.



Actually, Suspiria turned out to have quite a few similarities with Phenomena... Except that I think Phenomena was considerably more entertaining.

Plot: Susie arrives at a German dance school from America. Initially, no one is there to let her in, and she sees a student leaving and acting weird (and then in a separate scene we get to see that other student getting violently murdered at the place they had sought refuge). The next day, Susie finally gets into her school, and is treated rather peculiarly, and the staff is downright weird. Then, Susie has a fainting spell and starts bleeding from the nose and mouth. A doctor comes and she is prescribed bed rest and plenty of wine. After drinking the wine every night, she gets excessively sleepy... other students at the school begin to disappear... weird, violent things happen... And a weird, out-of-left-field ending happens. THE END.

I think this movie actually suffered a bit from having seen Phenomena first. I think Phenomena moves better, has stranger music choices and more bizarre, "out-of-left-field" moments. By comparison... Suspiria, although I have to say that it's a very nice-looking horror movie which is very visually intriguing and highly atmospheric... and gets boring.

Let me repeat that: BORING.

It doesn't look boring, does it? NO! Visually stunning!
But just... not quite fulfilling in spots.It's hard not to compare Suspiria to Phenomena. They're both about an adolescent girl who arrives at a boarding school and feels weird and has some problems -- and there's murders and weird stuff going on there. The actresses who played both girls are somewhat similar looking (compare Jessica Harper, the star of this, to the star of Phenomena, Jennifer Connelly. Not twins, by any means, but clearly very similar "types").

Don't get me wrong; this movie is extremely visually striking, and it does have that going for it, and does a good job of creating a creepy, other-worldly atmosphere...

I'm not sure if this picture illustrates that or not....But not as much "stuff" is going on in this movie as in Phenomena.

The music in this one, although (like Phenomena) by "Goblin," gets (unlike Phenomena) unpleasantly repetitive. Towards the middle/end, the "suspenseful" theme really, really began to get on my nerves.

But it is a visually stunning movie.There were definite "slow parts" in this movie. There was a dull, expository part in the middle. And while I was surprised by the ending of the film (in that it more or less came out of left field) it wasn't as much fun as the ending of Phenomena, which was absolutely ridiculous. (Which is a positive in the "so bad it's good" type of movie.)

Even the murders were visually stunning.On some level, I kind of want to blame the lead actress, Jessica Harper -- because when I try to think of what her character was like in this movie, I can't come up with many descriptive "character" elements to describe her, which could be a sign of bad acting -- but can also be a sign of a poorly written character. And that's really what she was. "Susie" barely has a backstory and spends most of the film passed out.
She does a good job of looking scared, though.... But there wasn't a lot for her to work with. So, this is the one element where I don't feel like it's fair to compare her to Jennifer Connelly in Phenomena, because Jennifer Connelly was given a whole lot more to do. Jennifer Connelly's character had issues with sleepwalking and could control bugs with her mind! Jessica Harper... drank drugged wine and spent a lot of time asleep.

Ultimately...

The main problem with Suspiria is that it's a bit dull in spots, and nowhere near as crazy as the movie Phenomena. I really probably would have liked this movie better if I had seen it before I saw Phenomena -- because then Phenomena would have seemed like a really crazy, amped-up version of Suspiria. But having seen them in reverse order, Suspiria seems like a more visually appealing but watered-down version of Phenomena.

Many weird, bizarre things happen in the movie that seem to follow no logical trail... and that's fine. Good, in fact, in this type of movie, because it keeps things interesting. It's fun, even -- because this does come across as one of those movies that feels like it was written by a space alien... while it succeeds in being well-shot and well-designed. (Reminds me a bit of the film Troll 2 in that respect; it looks like a real movie, but doesn't sound or act like a real movie.)  But more weird, bizarre things happen in Phenomena, so I'm going to call Phenomena the more enjoyable experience film.

I would recommend this movie if set design and general atmosphere are major reasons as to why you would watch a movie. Also, I'd recommend it if you happen to like weird Italian films. ALSO, I'd recommend it if you like "So-Bad-It's-Good" movies -- and haven't seen "Phenomena" yet.

RECOMMENDED(With Reservations)