Suspiria Sequel Would Have Taken Place in 1200s Scotland

Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 film Suspiria is one of the most interesting “remakes” in our current reboot world. It takes the setting and some of the elements of the original 1977 Italian film, directed by Dario Argento, but tells a brand new story. It is visually stimulating, engrossing, but sometimes too long and too in love with itself. Still, it was an interesting reimagining. Sadly, because it did not do well at the box office, we were denied something special from Guadagnino: a (further back) period drama sequel.

“The movie made absolutely nothing,” Guadagnino said during an interview with The Film Stage, when asked about the possibility of a sequel. “It was a disaster at the box office. I know that people are liking it more and more now. I loved making that movie. It’s very dear to me. But writer David Kajganich and I had really conceived it as the first half of a bigger story.”

Argento’s Suspiria is itself part of a much longer story, part of his The Three Mothers trilogy that is made up of Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears. While Suspiria is the most well-known of the three, all of them have a compelling supernatural story dealing with witchcraft. It seems like Guadagnino had a similar idea of exploring different threads in a sequel.

“But with Suspiria, I can tell you that in part two the storyline was layered in five different time zones and spaces,” he explained. “One of these was Helena Markos being a charlatan woman in the year 1200 in Scotland and how she got the secret of longevity.”

In the remake, Helena Markos (one of three roles played by Tilda Swinton) is worshiped among the witches at a coven, using the bodies of the young dancers as part of sacrifices. Her depiction in the ’18 film is grotesque with sores and growths, looking for a new younger body to take over. It might have been fun to see an origin story of this big bad, especially since they are the character who connects, along with Susie, the original and the ’18 version.

More than anything else, I think that despite the slightly bloated run time, Guadagnino’s visual direction in the film made it worth watching, and I can only imagine what he could have done with a Scottish landscape to play with.

Well, maybe in 2022.

(via Collider, image: Amazon Studios)

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