Morgan_Lightle’s review published on Letterboxd:
I can't say I loved Suspiria. It's self-importance is oppressive and for mainstream audiences inaccessible. The average person isn't going to know who the Baader Meinhof Gang were and Luca Guadagnino doesn't explain it. Most audiences will need Wikipedia to get even the simplest idea from Suspiria, that is if Guadagnino's stylistic violations doesn't turn viewers away.
Suspiria feels like a reversal of Darren Aronofsky's Mother. Where Aronofsky was blunt in his obvious metaphors, Guadagnino's makes his meaning accessible only to the most dedicated of viewers.
It's weird, considering how boldly unpretentious the original Suspiria was. Dario Argento didn't care about preaching ideas, he just wanted to entertain and made creativity a source of meaning for introspective viewers.
But 2018 calls for something different. We live in hypocritical times. Democracies preach universal rights and acceptance, but leaders do the exact opposite. Anti-intellectualism and ignorance run deep. We want meaning given to our mediocrity, so we can have no reason to better ourselves. To actually better ourselves would take painful self-criticism and effort, and that's too much of a bother.
When considering that, Suspiria's fuck you to mainstream acceptability is emboldening.
Guadagnino weaponizes our urge to look away and forget. This is horror as provocation, challenging viewers to beat its vile condemnations of our penchant to accept easy answers. The style hypnotizes and employs voyeurism as a mocking draw. Guadagnino leaves mysterious clues, as if he's trolling YouTubers who seek objective and rational entertainment from what's really a subjective and wild world.
To understand you must be mocked, you must be shamed, you must be made guilty for your ignorance, and accountable for your derision of the radically indecent. Suspiria claims power, because the powerful allow its abuse to occur. The past must be picked at like a scab, the establishment ripped open, and we need to be soaked in its blood. Only then can we rebuild. If not, we will move forward; we always do. But we'll be left forever ashamed, too afraid to look inward for answers, unable to hold ourselves accountable for what we've created.
Suspiria is what I imagine a heroin withdrawal must be like. It's delirious, hypnotic, and twisted, occasionally bursting with ecstasies of torturous pleasure. Like its predecessor, Suspiria is an otherworldly experience in horror.
Despite my misgivings, I think I like Suspiria. It's an abuse of vulgar auteurism gone mad, simultaneously eye-rolling and jaw-dropping. A deeply toxic film that feels grossly indulgent yet pleasing. Suspiria makes me want to say that mainstream audiences deserve to see it, just to get their well-deserved fuck you.