Original ‘Suspiria’ Star Praises Remake as “Brilliantly Scary”

The first footage from the upcoming remake of Suspiria made its public debut last week at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Nevada, with many attendees taking to social media to share how effectively disturbing the scenes were. Impressing audiences is one thing, but it takes a lot more to impress those involved with the original film. Luckily, star of the original 1977 film Jessica Harper took to Facebook to echo the praise of the remake.

“I have seen this movie–the most brilliantly scary film I have ever seen,” the actress shared. “[Director] Luca [Guadagnino]’s Call Me By Your Name does not prepare you for it, but throws into relief the director’s brilliance and versatility…”

Though it hasn’t fully been revealed, Harper herself makes an appearance in this new incarnation of the story.

At a time when the slasher film was on the rise, director Dario Argento offered a much more surreal tale of witches that ran a ballet school in Eastern Europe, whose moody atmosphere offered audiences a nightmarish experience.

The new film is set in 1977 Berlin and follows a young American woman who joins a prestigious dance company. She arrives just as one of the members mysteriously disappears. As she gets more involved in the dance company, she begins to suspect that the dance troupe is harboring a disturbing secret.

The film stars Tilda Swinton (Doctor Strange), Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey), Mia Goth (A Cure For Wellness), and Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass).

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke will be providing the film with its score.

As opposed to the approach of most filmmakers when crafting a remake of a famous story, Guadagnino has detailed how he aims to capture the mood and emotional reaction to his first viewing of the film as opposed to merely a re-telling of the film’s narrative.

“Every movie I make is a step inside my teenage dreams, and Suspiria is the most remarkably precise teenage megalomaniac dream I could have had,” the filmmaker told The Guardian. “I saw the poster when I was 11 and then I saw the film when I was 14, and it hit me hard. I immediately started to dream about making my own version of it. So in a way it makes me smile when I hear people say, ‘How dare you remakeSuspiria. Typical commerce-driven mentality.’ I was just a boy who had seen a movie that made him what he became. So that’s how I am approaching it: a homage to the incredible, powerful emotion I felt when I saw it.”

The film is slated to hit theaters sometime this fall.

Do you have high hopes for this remake? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

[H/T Bloody Disgusting]