A woman joins a dance company that is a front for a witches coven.

Guadagnino imbues many otherwise banal sequences with an underlying dread that keeps things interesting, and then punctuates things with disturbing violence. He tells the audience from the get-go what's actually going on, and then lets it all play out to a surprising end. The technical aspects are strong. It looks beautiful and the sound actually goes a long way at adding to the dark atmosphere. The acting is all very strong. The pacing is careful and considered, allowing a lot of drama to play out of the story, too.

Where is goes wrong, however, is in the climax. It's at this point all the subtlety Guadagnino has worked so hard to maintain is thrown out the window. The climax quickly turns ham-fisted and it all but smothers what could have been an otherwise surprising finale. Luckily, the epilogue does manage to pull it from the fire. It's just unfortunate that such a confident exercise in artistic and mature horror storytelling is unable to stick the landing.