The forthcoming remake of Suspiria that original director Dario Argento just can't understand is moving forward with director Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love), and now Chloe Grace Moretz has joined the cast alongside Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Mia Goth.
Interestingly, this marks the third horror remake for Moretz in six years and the fifth in her career overall, if you count her supporting turns in 2008's The Eye starring Jessica Alba and the 2005 Platinum Dunes remake of The Amityville Horror starring Ryan Reynolds as a totally jacked suburban dad. Did I mention she's only 19 years old? Feel free to indulge in a moment of silence for your never-realized dreams of childhood stardom.
Back in May, Guadagnino told me that the remake would be his attempt to recreate the impression he had of the film when he first saw it as an adolescent, while also making it “extremely, extremely scary,” which sounds like a good goal! Intriguingly, he also suggested that the film — which will be set in Berlin in 1977, also the year of the original movie's release — will hold a subtle allusion to the generational conflict that ensued in Germany 30 years after the Holocaust:
“It's a movie about a moment in time [in Germany] in which [there was] a great divide between those who wanted to forget the past and those who were demanding the older generation to confront the past,” he told me at the time. “So it's important. It's about guilt. It's a movie about guilt.”
Argento may not “get” the idea behind the remake, but personally I trust Guadagnino — a very talented filmmaker in his own right — to make an interesting version of this story at the very least. For the record, there's no clarification yet on which character Moretz will be playing.
Released in 1977, Suspiria was praised for its bold, surreal imagery and dreamlike tone and established Argento as a master of the horror genre. The film centers on an American ballet student (Jessica Harper) who comes to the horrifying realization that her new school in Munich is controlled by a coven of witches. Last October, the film came in at No. 13 on HitFix's Ultimate Horror Poll, which surveyed over 100 filmmakers, actors and experts in the horror genre to come up with a definitive list of the 100 greatest horror movies of all time.
[Variety]