We’ve been pondering a possible remake of the seminal 1977 Italian horror masterpiece Suspiria for a good long while. Suspiria, as I said in my Schlock & Awe review of it, is a perfect cacophony of ’70s horror over-stimulation, and the notion of a remake raised a lot of questions. Is it a thing, is it not a thing? How can someone remake a movie so distinctly part of the catalog of its writer-director, Dario Argento? But they are indeed going to be remaking it, and now we have a much better idea of who will be in it.
According to Variety, Chloe Moretz has been cast in the remake, joining Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton who have been cast already. Amazon Studios, the company funding and distributing the remake, could not be reached for comment by Nerdist at time of publication.
This casting gives us a much better idea of who would be playing whom in the film, if they are indeed keeping the storyline and cast members relatively similar. We can now assume that Moretz is playing the lead (played by Jessica Harper in the original), an American girl who comes to the prestigious German dance academy and begins to experience the weirdness and terror that comes with it being front for a coven of witches. Johnson would then probably be playing the friend who gets caught up in the mystery and may or may not meet a razor-wiry end. And Swinton would almost certainly be playing the headmistress of the academy and the second in command of the coven behind the mysterious and unseen Helena Markos, aka Mater Suspiriorum, aka Mother of Sighs. Moretz and Johnson might be playing the opposite rolls, but we’d bet it’s this configuration.
Suspiria is being directed by Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) from a script by David Kajganich. It’s unclear if this remake will be able to match the utter madness of the original, or the sheer, operatic brutality that is a hallmark of Italian horror of that era. But we do know it will make us keep whispering “Suspiria” for the next thousand years.
Image: Prodizioni Atlas Consorziate
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
