The remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, which is often hailed as one of the greatest horror films ever made, is moving forward and director Luca Guadagnino wants to placate and ease the minds of the fans of the original film.

“I want to pay homage, because watching ‘Suspiria’ by Dario Argento has been a pivotal experience for me. I think it even made part of me what it is,” he tells Den of Geek.

Talking further about how the film has had a significant impact on his life, Guadagnino continues, “I saw ‘Suspiria’ when I was 14, but before seeing the actual film on TV, I had seen for the first time the poster of this girl dancer with the reclining head severed and the blood flowing from her torso to the sex when I was ten, and I was shocked! I had my own internet in my head and I was going back to the image constantly.”

However, the most important part of this interview is when Guadagnino explained that he understands the fears, concerns, and even anger that many have with the idea of a film so beloved as Suspiria being remade:

I don’t much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way—maybe we shouldn’t. I know it’s post-modern to say ‘I want to pay homage to the emotion I felt when I saw the movie,’ but truthfully, I want to understand what is the concept of horror in motherhood, which I think is the element that struck me when I was 14. And I wanted to be relentless. Nobody complains that we go and see a new version of La Traviata at the Met. If it’s a great Traviata, you will say ‘I will never forget this Traviata. I think we shouldn’t be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.

The Suspiria remake will be shooting this September with Tilda Swinton (Constantine, We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Grey).

In the 1977 original, “In a stormy night, the American dancer Suzy Bannion arrives in Freiburg coming from New York to join a famous and expensive ballet school for a three years training. On the next morning, she is informed by the direction of the school that a student she met leaving the place on the previous night was violently murdered and the police is investigating the crime. She becomes friend of another student, Sara, and she realizes that the house is indeed a coven of evil witches.”