**Spoilers below for Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria.” You’ve been warned.**
As we approached the release of Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the classic Dario Argento film “Suspiria,” many horror fans wondered just how similar the two works would be. It quickly became clear that Guadagnino was going in a different direction with his take on the “Suspiria” story, with his opposite color palette and additions to the mythology. But even if you go into the film knowing all that, you’re still in for at least one big shock.
In a recent interview with “Suspiria” star Dakota Johnson, Collider asked the actress about some of the more spoiler-y aspects of the new horror film. First, they wanted to know what it was like for Johnson to work again with Tilda Swinton, the two have worked together previously on another Guadagnino film “A Bigger Splash,” considering she’s playing not one, but three separate roles in the new film.
“It’s really extraordinary. I feel very privileged to be able to watch her work and to work alongside her. She’s the most inspirational woman I’ve ever met … for me. To be able to have a very intimate relationship with her is like out of this world. So to see her in all the forms … I mean, it was just fun. It was so much fun and it creates a completely different dynamic between us,” explains Johnson.
However, watching Tilda Swinton as an old man and an aging, decrepit witch is not the big shock we were alluding to earlier. No, at the end of the film, it’s revealed that Johnson’s character Susie is, in fact, Mother Suspiriorum and proceeds to summon Death to slaughter those who betrayed her and followed Mother Markos.
Johnson gives a detailed explanation about how she hopes the film sets up the big reveal at the end and how she used that knowledge to provide at least one subtle hint:
“There are so many threads of possibilities. She comes from a Mennonite family, which Mennonites came from Germany. She has sort of like denounced the church, her mother and her father. She does not … she just fundamentally does not accept the life that she’s been given, which a long time ago if you did that, you were a witch. If you were at all independent, if you thought independently, if you felt independently from your father or the church, you were a witch.
So there’s all these kind of like hints that Susie’s different but she doesn’t know. She just feels this pull, this magnet, this thing, to dance and she has to go to Berlin. She has to be with Madame Blanc. It’s like just she was born in the wrong place. I think that’s how she makes sense of it, like, ‘I just don’t belong here.’
Then I believe once she understands what is happening there is a very very subtle moment where I think she realizes what she’s meant to do. I want the audience to figure out when that is.”
If you’ve already seen Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” then you probably are well aware the film is going to require multiple viewings to fully appreciate all that was done. And it seems that Johnson would love you to look back and see if you can find the “moment.”
“Suspiria” is in select theaters now.