Suspiria

ANDY’S RATING: ★★

In cinemas on Friday

HORROR nuts consider Dario Argento’s Suspiria one of the

scariest films ever made. Yet I doubt many wanted a remake.

Like flares and avocado bathroom suites, this camp shocker didn’t just come from the 70s, it deserved to stay there too.

Argento’s film about a witches’ dance academy was camp, gory, sexy and had a thumping prog-rock soundtrack.

Oscar-winning director Luca Guadagnino has a better cast, a proper choreographer and an artfully creepy soundtrack by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.

It could have been heaps of fun if it hadn’t taken itself so seriously.

It’s 1977 and Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) has run away from a Christian community in Ohio to audition for a prestigious dance academy in Berlin.

She has had no training but her routine enthrals the school’s director Madame Blanc (an excellent Tilda Swinton).

Swinton is less convincing swathed in old man make-up to play the psychiatrist who is treating what he thinks is a deluded dancer (Chloe Grace Moretz) who claims her teacher is a witch.

Those scenes, along with the shrink’s rubbery skin, set our nerves on edge as strange things start happening while Susie dances her way to the top.

It’s quietly creepy but surprisingly unscary as Guadagnino devotes too much time to dance routines and German history.