A dancer was destroyed in Suspiria remake footage shown at CinemaCon

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Yesterday, the teaser poster for director Luca Guadanino's upcoming remake of Dario Argento's 1977 classic SUSPIRIA arrived online, and while we were looking at that some lucky attendees of CinemaCon in Las Vegas were getting to see the first footage from the film.

The footage was unveiled during Amazon Studios' panel at the convention, which also served as a luncheon presentation… and some of the food there went untouched when the violence on display in the clip caused some in the room to lose their appetites.

Birth.Movies.Death's Scott Wampler shared a description of the footage that was shown, saying that the clip would cut back and forth between 

a dance studio where a crying young woman clawed at the mirrored walls, and another studio – in some other location, and without the mirrored walls – where Tilda Swinton was overseeing the routine of another dancer, played by Dakota Johnson.

At first, the connection between these two scenes wasn't clear, but soon enough it became evident that the routine being performed by Johnson was having an effect on the dancer in the mirrored room – as Johnson's body swirled about the studio space, the dancer in the first room was tossed around like a rag doll. Soon enough, hideous, grey, tumor-like growths appeared underneath the flesh of her abdomen. Shrieking in pain, the dancer's body was twisted and folded into a number of unnatural positions. In the second room, Swinton watched eagerly as Johnson continued to flit about the studio. Back to the mirrored room, and now the poor young lady's face was stretching into unnatural shapes, a toothy rictus letting forth a guttural howl. Her body folded again and again before the dancer wet herself, graphically, right there onscreen, a thick stream of drool pouring from her mouth. Eventually, Johnson's routine came to an end, and what was left in the other room was basically just a crumpled, leaking mess that used to be a human being.

Wampler was blown away by this clip, saying that it was "beautifully shot and edited with laser precision", and that we're in for a treat if it's indicative of the overall film.

A SUSPIRIA remake is a tough sell, but if the film receives reactions like this clip received during that CinemaCon panel it sounds like a lot of horror fans are going to end up being won over by a movie most of us never would have imagined would even get made, let alone being good.

Guadanino's SUSPIRIA has the following synopsis: 

Susie Bannion, a young American woman, travels to the prestigious Markos Tanz Company in Berlin in the year 1977. She arrives just as one of the Company’s members, Patricia, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As Susie makes extraordinary progress under the guidance of Madame Blanc, the Company’s revolutionary artistic director, she befriends another dancer, Sara, who shares her suspicions that the Matrons, and the Company itself, may be harboring a dark and menacing secret. 

Johnson and Swinton are joined in the cast by Mia Goth, Chloë Grace Moretz, Lutz Ebersdorf, and original SUSPIRIA star Jessica Harper.

Amazon is expected to release the film sometime this fall.