David Gordon Green is cool and all, and unlike Josh, I have a lot of love for the John Carpenter original. I haven't seen it in a while, but I've always regarded the 1978 film as almost magically pure: while so many horror films of the era are sloppy, unfocused or garishly padded, "Halloween" is an exercise in restraint, studiously building tension, keeping camp at bay, and never throwing the audience an extraneous bone. It's lean and mean.
But those lean bones proved the basis for a friggin' exhausting parade of imitators and sequels. '78s "Halloween" is such a focused and economical ride, there's been nowhere for the legacy to go but over-adorned, ugly self-parody. And while I'm confident Green's installment will be dope, at best, he's going to re-introduce the focused scary/cool of the first film. It's a franchise-rehabilitation effort. It's not going to take us anywhere REALLY interesting. How can it?
But holy cow - could there be a more "all bets are off" Halloween offering than a Guadagnino-helmed "Suspiria" remake? Love it or hate it, the Argento classic is anything but a familiar... it was an artfully vulgar cultural oddity then, and over time, removed from the Italian "Giallo" scene, it's only gotten weirder. It seems to me that Guadagnino's only mandate, here, is to make his "Suspiria" as culturally distinctive and spooky as Argento's was, once - and that's a hell of a lot more interesting than Green's job description.
I'll catch "Halloween" on FX, thank you. Bring on the dance witches! And Thom Yorke!
Carpenter's original Halloween is one of my all-time favorite horror movies, a genuine depiction of horror and purest blackest evil that still chills me to this day. This new sequel is especially intriguing to me not just for its back-to-basics approach which ignores all but the original film in the series - I've only seen the first one and the unrelated third film so I'm already primed for this experience - but because of the creative team behind it. Seeing David Gordon Green and Danny McBride's names attached to the script makes me especially curious just to see what these guys who aren't typically associated with horror come up with. However, I still think Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is where I have to go, just because everything we've seen so far suggests something wholly and entirely distinct from the original, and looks absolutely skin-crawlingly creepy to boot. Halloween (2018) looks good, but also looks too much like more of the same.
Lucas Singleton - 6 years ago
I am really excited for Suspiria, but Halloween has been my favorite horror franchise since my mom deemed them too scary for me to watch as a child, but would answer almost any questions I had about them (and her descriptive answers scared me more than the movies ever did). In fact, I like this franchise so much I will happily watch any of its awful entries, except Zombie's II, which is so disgusting it's not even fun. After 40 years, I'm so excited for a potentially worthy sequel to the original.
Joel Edmiston - 6 years ago
Seems like I'm not the only one who saw the new Halloween at a festival, because I would have thought Halloween would run away with this one. Before seeing it, i always had more faith in Halloween, even though I've enjoyed Guadaninos work more than dgg's. I think that since Suspiria is more untouched than Halloween (and its many sequels), it feels dirty revisiting it, where with Halloween, new iterations are encouraged since we're already accustomed to them. Either way I'm still excited for Suspiria and I will say that the new Halloween is great and I expect it to be a big crowd pleaser.
Peter Michael Valerio Jr - 6 years ago
This may be a little bit of a cheat. I voted for Suspiria, because I've seen DGG's Halloween already at a festival. I liked it a lot.
Peter Michael Valerio Jr - 6 years ago
This may be a little bit of a cheat. I voted for Suspiria, because I've seen DGG's Halloween already at a festival. I liked it a lot.
Jon Demske - 6 years ago
Suspiria! Just saw the original Suspiria restored in 4K on the big screen and it oozed not just color but an intangible atmosphere. Yes the acting and dialogue are bad, and it’s more gripping than actually scary. Best to approach it like a technicolor 70s adapatation of a nonexistent graphic novel. So, to see what Guadagnino does with the material—especially after Call Me By Your Name—is frightfully exciting. All in on Suspiria
Russell Harlin (East Bay, CA) - 6 years ago
Suspiria. The original was a total mind trip and I'm curious to see what Guadagnino does with it. That combined with Thom Yorke doing the soundtrack makes it a must see. Radiohead members have a history of delivering amazing soundtracks to equally amazing movies. Okay, maybe just Jonny Greenwood, but hopefully Thom can add his name to that list.
Tom Morris - 6 years ago
Let’s watch NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS instead!
Erin Teachman (Washington, DC) - 6 years ago
I work in theatre and in dance for a living and, many professional lives ago, I was a Germanist, so a movie about dancers in Berlin feels like it was made for me. I am fascinated by choreography, the stories to be told by the shape of human body, its movement, it's relationship to sound. It's incredibly powerful live and on the stage and it's a core part of the storytelling of cinema as well, even if it isn't always as explicit as in SUSPIRIA. I'm honestly not terribly interested in horror as a genre, but something about modern life as I experience it keeps bringing me back to these stories of fear, terror, and the grotesque. Movies like IT FOLLOWS, THE WITCH, GET OUT, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, THE BABADOOK, and IT COMES AT NIGHT all have far far more on their mind than being scary or gory for their own sake, there is something profoundly human they are attempting to articulate and that I respond to. The trailers for SUSPIRIA make me think that will be true of that film as well, so I am very excited to cringe and cower my way through it and so that I can sit shattered in the theatre as the credits roll mulling over whatever it was that just happened to me and my fellow moviegoers.
Max Johnson - 6 years ago
While I'm excited about both, the new Halloween movie is NOT a remake. It's a direct sequel to the original and pretty much ignores everything past that. Just a heads up.
Randy Grimshaw - 6 years ago
Two words: THOM YORKE
Sam Vargen - Santa Ana, CA - 6 years ago
Suspiria is exactly the type of movie that should be remade. While it's a beloved classic for many reasons and has an amazing setting and premise, it's really just a cheesy, horribly-acted gorefest. But... that premise is prime for a radical, much more serious reinterpretation. I think we should remake movies that had lots of potential but weren't executed greatly and either improve upon them or reinvent them with a very different vision. Suspiria looks like a perfect remake.
Laura Ellis - 6 years ago
The original Suspira was a schlocky 70s horror that, I thought, was pretty terrible. The plot was not well developed, and the acting atrocious. The remake has to be an improvement.
The 1978 Halloween, however, was a classic, and the best of the genre, in my opinion. Well acted, suspenseful, beautifully directed by John Carpenter. I sincerely doubt that the remake will be close to being as good as the original, just more gorey, bloody. Carpenter implied those things.
Robert Blenheim - 6 years ago
Neither. I'm not a fan of "Halloween" and their irksome sequels, and Dario Argento's original "Suspiria" could not be equaled, no matter who's remaking it.
David Gordon Green is cool and all, and unlike Josh, I have a lot of love for the John Carpenter original. I haven't seen it in a while, but I've always regarded the 1978 film as almost magically pure: while so many horror films of the era are sloppy, unfocused or garishly padded, "Halloween" is an exercise in restraint, studiously building tension, keeping camp at bay, and never throwing the audience an extraneous bone. It's lean and mean.
But those lean bones proved the basis for a friggin' exhausting parade of imitators and sequels. '78s "Halloween" is such a focused and economical ride, there's been nowhere for the legacy to go but over-adorned, ugly self-parody. And while I'm confident Green's installment will be dope, at best, he's going to re-introduce the focused scary/cool of the first film. It's a franchise-rehabilitation effort. It's not going to take us anywhere REALLY interesting. How can it?
But holy cow - could there be a more "all bets are off" Halloween offering than a Guadagnino-helmed "Suspiria" remake? Love it or hate it, the Argento classic is anything but a familiar... it was an artfully vulgar cultural oddity then, and over time, removed from the Italian "Giallo" scene, it's only gotten weirder. It seems to me that Guadagnino's only mandate, here, is to make his "Suspiria" as culturally distinctive and spooky as Argento's was, once - and that's a hell of a lot more interesting than Green's job description.
I'll catch "Halloween" on FX, thank you. Bring on the dance witches! And Thom Yorke!
Carpenter's original Halloween is one of my all-time favorite horror movies, a genuine depiction of horror and purest blackest evil that still chills me to this day. This new sequel is especially intriguing to me not just for its back-to-basics approach which ignores all but the original film in the series - I've only seen the first one and the unrelated third film so I'm already primed for this experience - but because of the creative team behind it. Seeing David Gordon Green and Danny McBride's names attached to the script makes me especially curious just to see what these guys who aren't typically associated with horror come up with. However, I still think Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is where I have to go, just because everything we've seen so far suggests something wholly and entirely distinct from the original, and looks absolutely skin-crawlingly creepy to boot. Halloween (2018) looks good, but also looks too much like more of the same.
I am really excited for Suspiria, but Halloween has been my favorite horror franchise since my mom deemed them too scary for me to watch as a child, but would answer almost any questions I had about them (and her descriptive answers scared me more than the movies ever did). In fact, I like this franchise so much I will happily watch any of its awful entries, except Zombie's II, which is so disgusting it's not even fun. After 40 years, I'm so excited for a potentially worthy sequel to the original.
Seems like I'm not the only one who saw the new Halloween at a festival, because I would have thought Halloween would run away with this one. Before seeing it, i always had more faith in Halloween, even though I've enjoyed Guadaninos work more than dgg's. I think that since Suspiria is more untouched than Halloween (and its many sequels), it feels dirty revisiting it, where with Halloween, new iterations are encouraged since we're already accustomed to them. Either way I'm still excited for Suspiria and I will say that the new Halloween is great and I expect it to be a big crowd pleaser.
This may be a little bit of a cheat. I voted for Suspiria, because I've seen DGG's Halloween already at a festival. I liked it a lot.
This may be a little bit of a cheat. I voted for Suspiria, because I've seen DGG's Halloween already at a festival. I liked it a lot.
Suspiria! Just saw the original Suspiria restored in 4K on the big screen and it oozed not just color but an intangible atmosphere. Yes the acting and dialogue are bad, and it’s more gripping than actually scary. Best to approach it like a technicolor 70s adapatation of a nonexistent graphic novel. So, to see what Guadagnino does with the material—especially after Call Me By Your Name—is frightfully exciting. All in on Suspiria
Suspiria. The original was a total mind trip and I'm curious to see what Guadagnino does with it. That combined with Thom Yorke doing the soundtrack makes it a must see. Radiohead members have a history of delivering amazing soundtracks to equally amazing movies. Okay, maybe just Jonny Greenwood, but hopefully Thom can add his name to that list.
Let’s watch NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS instead!
I work in theatre and in dance for a living and, many professional lives ago, I was a Germanist, so a movie about dancers in Berlin feels like it was made for me. I am fascinated by choreography, the stories to be told by the shape of human body, its movement, it's relationship to sound. It's incredibly powerful live and on the stage and it's a core part of the storytelling of cinema as well, even if it isn't always as explicit as in SUSPIRIA. I'm honestly not terribly interested in horror as a genre, but something about modern life as I experience it keeps bringing me back to these stories of fear, terror, and the grotesque. Movies like IT FOLLOWS, THE WITCH, GET OUT, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, THE BABADOOK, and IT COMES AT NIGHT all have far far more on their mind than being scary or gory for their own sake, there is something profoundly human they are attempting to articulate and that I respond to. The trailers for SUSPIRIA make me think that will be true of that film as well, so I am very excited to cringe and cower my way through it and so that I can sit shattered in the theatre as the credits roll mulling over whatever it was that just happened to me and my fellow moviegoers.
While I'm excited about both, the new Halloween movie is NOT a remake. It's a direct sequel to the original and pretty much ignores everything past that. Just a heads up.
Two words: THOM YORKE
Suspiria is exactly the type of movie that should be remade. While it's a beloved classic for many reasons and has an amazing setting and premise, it's really just a cheesy, horribly-acted gorefest. But... that premise is prime for a radical, much more serious reinterpretation. I think we should remake movies that had lots of potential but weren't executed greatly and either improve upon them or reinvent them with a very different vision. Suspiria looks like a perfect remake.
The original Suspira was a schlocky 70s horror that, I thought, was pretty terrible. The plot was not well developed, and the acting atrocious. The remake has to be an improvement.
The 1978 Halloween, however, was a classic, and the best of the genre, in my opinion. Well acted, suspenseful, beautifully directed by John Carpenter. I sincerely doubt that the remake will be close to being as good as the original, just more gorey, bloody. Carpenter implied those things.
Neither. I'm not a fan of "Halloween" and their irksome sequels, and Dario Argento's original "Suspiria" could not be equaled, no matter who's remaking it.