Suspiria | Telescope Film
Suspiria

Suspiria

Critic Rating

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User Rating

In this cult classic, Suzy is an American ballet dancer who moves to Germany to attend the prestigious Tanz Academy. Like any newcomer, she has a hard time settling in. But as strange and sinister things begin to occur, Suzy learns that the ballet school has a terrifying past — and present…

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What are users saying?

Summer Goldstein

An unforgettable classic, Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA crafts a nightmarish atmosphere with its use of vivid cinematography and an eerie (yet somehow quite catchy) soundtrack, making for a viewing experience that I find to be entrancing and almost hypnotic.

Kelsey Thomas

A genuinely terrifying horror film full of tension and visceral scares. Dario Argento’s artistry comes through even during the more grisly scenes. If you find all the action onscreen too scary — which is likely! — you can at least appreciate (or distract yourself with) the mise en scène.

What are critics saying?

100

RogerEbert.com by Peter Sobczynski

Suspiria truly is one of the absolute classics of the horror genre and anyone who considers themselves to be true students of the cinema owe it to themselves to experience it for themselves, especially if they get a chance to see it on the big screen where it belong.

100

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

Argento’s deliriously artificial horror film owes as much to Georges Méliès and German Expressionism (specifically The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) as it does to Jean Cocteau and Grimm fairy tales. =

100

Empire by Adam Smith

Suspiria is the perfect antipasto.

100

The Playlist by Bradley Warren

As visceral and invigorating as classics like “Deep Red” or “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” might be, they aren’t a patch on 1977’s Suspiria.

90

Time Out

With his sharp eye for the bizarre and for vulgar over-decoration, it's always fascinating to watch; the thrills and spills are so classy and fast that the movie becomes in effect what horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them. Don't think, just panic.

90

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

A veteran of Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, the deadpan Harper puts her training to good use, gracefully eluding the attacking furniture and skillfully dodging the imploding set, as she flees—arms protectively crossed before her face—out into the night.

90

Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)

With his sharp eye for the bizarre and for vulgar over-decoration, it's always fascinating to watch; the thrills and spills are so classy and fast that the movie becomes in effect what horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them. Don't think, just panic.

80

TV Guide Magazine

The original ad campaign boasted that the only thing more terrifying than the last five minutes of SUSPIRIA were the first 90. Actually, it's the first 15 minutes that contain some of the most frightening footage ever committed to celluloid, but why quibble.

80

TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)

The original ad campaign boasted that the only thing more terrifying than the last five minutes of SUSPIRIA were the first 90. Actually, it's the first 15 minutes that contain some of the most frightening footage ever committed to celluloid, but why quibble.

75

LarsenOnFilm by Josh Larsen

The movie is a collection of ghoulish creative impulses (some of them gorily sadistic, as when a character is trapped in a room of barbed wire) rather than a coherent story.

70

The New York Times by Janet Maslin

Mr. Argento's methods make potentially stomach-turning material more interesting than it ought to be. Shooting on bold, very fake-looking sets, he uses bright primary colors and stark lines to create a campy, surreal atmosphere, and his distorted camera angles and crazy lighting turn out to be much more memorable than the carnage.

60

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

Dario Argento's grossly overstated mise-en-scene adds some perverse interest to this routine (if unusually gory) horror film from 1976. Argento works so hard for his effects—throwing around shock cuts, colored lights, and peculiar camera angles—that it would be impolite not to be a little frightened

40

Washington Post by Gary Arnold

A ridiculously self-indulgent spree of satanic bogeymannerisms entitled Suspiria, virtually self-destructs in the opening sequence. Eager to menace the audience from every sensory direction, Argento doesn't so much create and sustain an illusion of terror as invite you to marvel at his garish ingenuity, at the spectacle of a filmmaker who can't resist overstylizing and upstaging his material.