Luca Guadagnino is best-known for the tear-jerker, coming-of-age film ‘Call Me By Your Name’, but the director is going in a completely different direction with his next project, ‘Suspiria’.
He is currently preparing to release a remake of the 1977 horror movie and a handful of industry insiders were shown a surprise clip from the film at a CinemaCon event on Thursday (26 April).
None of the attendees knew what was going to be shown, or that Luca and star Dakota Johnson would be there to introduce it.
While the clip won’t be shared online, people were allowed to tweet their thoughts, with many revealing that if this short section is anything to go by, the film will be an incredibly difficult watch.
The teaser in question saw Dakota’s dancer character performing a gruelling routine, under the watchful eye of Tilda Swinton. These shots were interspersed with ones of another woman, clawing at the walls of a dance studio.
Variety reports that as Dakota pirouettes and speeds up, she takes control of the other woman’s body, which becomes contorted and is “literally ripped apart, descending into a mess of broken bones, urine, spittle, and blood”.
Collider’s editor-in-chief Steven Weintraub told his Twitter followers that the ‘Suspiria’ teaser was “one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever seen”, adding that people at his table “turned away” and stopped watching.
Birth. Movies. Death. writer Scott Wampler penned an article on why the clip probably wasn’t suitable for a lunch event – seriously, what were Amazon producers thinking?! – and plenty of other writers admitted to feeling traumatised:
Chloe Grace Moretz and Mia Goth also star in the film, which is slated for release this Autumn, and the score is being created by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
Speaking about the project earlier this year, Dakota revealed that she needed therapy when filming finished, telling Elle magazine: “It fucked me up so much.”
“We were in an abandoned hotel on top of a mountain,” she said. “It had 30 telephone poles on the roof, so there was electricity pulsating through the building, and everyone was shocking each other.
“It was cold as shit, and so dry. The only thing that helped was dousing myself with oil every night. Now I can’t get enough.”