SUSPIRIA (2018)

"They'll hollow me out and eat my cunt on a plate."

So close, but yet so far away.

West Berlin, 1977. A young American woman moves to Germany to join a prestigious (and creepy as fuck) all female dance academy. Things start out okay, but it isn’t too long before she starts to notice that some sinister shenanigans are afoot. Most of the shenanigan’s stem from the fact that the school is run by an evil coven of thousand-year-old witches in the middle of a power struggle.

SUSPIRIA, for those of you who don’t know (and there’s nothing wrong with not knowing…everybody has to learn something somewhere) is a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film of the same name. SUSPIRIA (1977) has a justifiable place in movie history (awesome musical score, bold use of colours, etc.), but it wasn’t a great film. So…that said, I was looking forward to checking out this remake.

The opening scene was a snoozer, but after that things start going along pretty good with a creepy atmosphere, surreal dream imagery and gruesome violence. Then, for some unknown reason things slow down and it just starts to drone on and on and on. For 152 minutes. I don’t mind horror films with long runtimes. Hell, MIDSOMMAR was 148 minutes and I love that movie, but the story has got to move forward! SUSPIRIA has way too much excess baggage and unneeded bullshit.

I’m not a filmmaker and nobody reads this bullshit, but off the top of my handsome head I’d say the entire Dr. Josef Klemperer character could have been left out of the story. Every scene with him drags on like torture. Secondly, the witch showdown climax sucked and looked like hell. After such a long build-up it was a huge disappointment. Also, what was the point of setting the film in 1977? Who gives a fuck?  My simple dmub brain just wants to see some creepy witch shit!

Excessive runtime that kills the film, bloated script, above average acting, completely unneeded casting / make-up gimmicks that take the viewer out of the film, promising moments of cool arthouse creepiness, a lot of drab colours, random arthouse nudity, various moments of obviously fake-looking computer graphics, impressive mirror effects, at least two David Bowie posters. SUSPIRIA is an interesting film, but when it’s all said and done, it just left me wanting to see yet another (and hopefully superior) remake. The story idea is way too awesome to be left like this.

[This has nothing to do with the review, but am I the only one that thinks Dakota Johnson's character in this film looks like Sarah Goldberg's character in Barry? It was kinda tripping me out.]

Original - Suspiria (1977)

LEPRECHAUN (1993)

A man steals a bag holding 100 gold coins from an evil 600-year-old leprechaun. The leprechaun murders the man’s wife and then whips the dude’s ass, but not before getting himself trapped in a large wooden crate in the man’s basement. Fast-forward 10 years and a new group of people (dad, adult daughter and three house painters) show up to repair the now vacant house. Sounds simple enough, but before you can say “singer man's has times sounding like yoda monster from starwars I sleep now”, these super geniuses have not only found the bag of gold and released the leprechaun, but one of them actually eats one of the gold pieces! How does that even happen? After hearing that one of the characters ate a piece of the leprechaun’s precious gold, the viewer would naturally expect for the leprechaun to violently cram his arm up the dude’s ass and rip out the gold, but nope. LEPRECHAUN might have been rated R back in ye olde 1993, but it’s more like a light-hearted PG nowadays.

Medium pace, zero gore, zero nudity, very little blood, wacky cartoony stuff like the leprechaun roller skating through a fence and leaving an outline of his body or him riding a skateboard while making funny faces, zero backstory on the leprechaun, cheesy acting that matches the goofy script, awesome early 1990’s fashions, interesting casting (at least for movie nerds), meh ending. Overall, LEPRECHAUN feels more like an ABC After School Special / Goosebumps comedy lovechild than an actual horror movie. But whatever, I still enjoyed it and smiled at the leprechaun’s silly shenanigans.

LEPRECHAUN would make an interesting double-feature with (the far superior) CRITTERS since the story and look of the movies are so similar. Was that intentional?

[Thoughts outside of the review: I haven't watched the other films in the series yet (at least in a review capacity), but I was daydreaming about a scenario where the leprechaun is trapped in a crate full of murder mystery novels.  Then when he is released years later, he's not only a murderous psychopath looking for his gold, but also the world's greatest detective!  He could even have a spunky assistant like Cordelia in Angel that would keep him somewhat in line.  I also think a LEPRECHAUN / WISHMASTER crossover has a lot of potential. And not them fighting against each other, but instead working together to obliterate teenagers.]

Part 2 - Leprechaun 2 (1994)
Part 3 - Leprechaun 3 (1995)
Part 4 - Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
Part 5 - Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)
Part 6 - Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003)
Reboot - Leprechaun: Origins (2014)
Direct sequel to original film - Leprechaun Returns (2018)