This week is kind of the week I’ve been dreading. As soon as I saw Suspiria on the syllabus, I was not excited. I saw the new one with a friend because he told me it was an art house film about ballet. What he didn’t tell me was that it was also a horror movie. I don’t blame him, I never would have gone with him if I knew that it was horror. I simply can’t do horror. And I really don’t know why. Horror elements or scenes from in a dark movie that could be classified as horror don’t really bother me. Nor does horror in the Lovecraftian sense. I can do all of that and actually tend to like it a lot. But as soon as the movie has gruesome deaths in a horror movie I kind of find it hard to watch. It’s not even the gore that gets me, I’m fine with that. It’s like a primal fear of being killed horribly and one of my biggest fears; dying too young. Horror movie directors know this and always without fail manage to trick me every time I think I can steel myself to not be scared. The worst part is when I know exactly what will happen and sometimes even when it will happen and I still get terrified when it happens. Suspiria is no different for me. I’ll talk positives first before I get into the negatives for me. First of all, the soundtrack. I mean woahhhh. I definitely have listened to it several times before I watched the movie because my buddy has it on vinyl and sometimes it’s just what he puts on. But it’s awesome. I love it so much and it’s probably the best part of the movie for me.

I also loved how the whole film looked. It took really awesome liberties with lighting and made the whole movie feel a little like a fairy tale, which was definitely the vibe I got from it anyway so it fit really well. The set design was on point too and really drew me into the world that was created. The whole film was a feast for the eyes and I loved it. But I have to talk about the things that got me. First of all, the practical effects are amazingly terrifying. The way the camera would zoom in and do closeups while someone was being murdered really made you feel like the whole thing was real. But I have to be honest, I was not a fan of any of the stabbings. It wasn’t that they felt too real to me; it was easy to tell they were fake. It had something to do with how strange and up close we as an audience were to a lot of these deaths. I definitely didn’t like that. Other than that though, the movie was pretty interesting and I loved the story. I’m probably not going to be watching it again anytime soon though.