[Editorial] Let’s Talk About the Lack of Color in the ‘Suspiria’ Remake
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But where are all those pretty Argento colors?!
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is nothing if not a truly one-of-a-kind art piece experience, with perhaps its two most notable aspects being purely aesthetic. I’m of course talking about Goblin’s haunting score and Argento’s gorgeous technicolor lighting, which come together to imbue Suspiria with a surreal and truly memorable quality all its own.
But when Suspiria returns to theaters this coming November, that aesthetic will be quite different. Rather than re-using Goblin’s score or commissioning a new one from them, Italian director Luca Guadagnino instead enlisted Radiohead’s Thom Yorke to score his remake, and he’s also opted for a muted color palette that’s in direct contrast to Argento’s bright, vivid colors. This much is clear based on yesterday’s eerie, ’70s-feeling teaser trailer, which was heavy on greys and browns and entirely bereft of eye-popping reds and blues. Even our new Susie Bannion’s red hair, a seemingly perfect way for Guadagnino to have added some colorful pop to his take on Argento’s classic, looks muted to the point of nearly being brown.
Dario Argento’s Suspiria, 1977
From an aesthetic standpoint, the lack of color in a movie titled Suspiria is a surprising choice for Guadagnino to have made, but we actually shouldn’t be surprised by what we saw in yesterday’s aforementioned teaser. I say this because not only has Guadagnino stressed from the very beginning that his Suspiria isn’t quite a “remake” of Argento’s 1977 masterpiece, but he also told us outright, over a year ago, that his Suspiria would be anything but colorful.
Guadagnino told Indiewire back in March 2017…
[My Suspiria is] a film about guilt and motherhood. It has no primary colors in its color palette, unlike the original. It will be cold, evil and really dark.
Cold. Evil. Dark. Three words that one could use to describe the first teaser for Guadagnino’s Suspiria, so you can’t say he wasn’t honest up front about what he intended to deliver with this one. Guadagnino, it’s now plainly clear as day, didn’t set out to re-do what Dario Argento already did but rather take the general storyline and *feel* of a film he deeply loves and reinterpret it through his own eyes. His own aesthetic. What Argento did with Suspiria could simply never be recreated by another filmmaker. And Guadagnino smartly didn’t try. Without that iconic Goblin score or “Argento lighting,” Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria has the chance to stand on its own two feet, free of direct comparisons to its same-named predecessor.
Remakes of beloved classics are something of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation for filmmakers, as fans have been known to oppose both remakes that lazily recreate films of the past and ones that boldly take them in new directions. But if you’re asking me, the only worthwhile remakes are the ones that fall into the latter category. And though we won’t know for sure until later this year, all signs are at this point in time pointing to Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake being one of the good ones. One of the worthwhile ones.
We’ll find out for sure on November 2.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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