Sound of Suspiria

Seven years later, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria has only gotten sharper, stranger, and more essential. In a 2018 KEXP radio interview about the film’s soundtrack, Thom Yorke described his composition process: “I was thinking of Trump, and I was thinking of the beginnings of fascism.” He’s right! Because Suspiria isn’t just a horror movie about witches; it’s a brutal, bloody meditation on power, control, and historical amnesia. And in 2025, that lands differently—more urgently, more viscerally. This isn’t just a remake. It’s a mirror. And it’s telling us to look harder.

Dario Argento’s original Suspiria (1977) follows Suzy Bannion, a young American ballet student, as she joins a prestigious dance academy in Germany. But this is no ordinary school. It harbors a sinister secret: a coven of witches. As Suzy descends deeper into the academy’s dark underbelly, she’s drawn into a surreal nightmare of gruesome murders and supernatural menace. You should watch it for the sheer sensory overload—a fever dream of crimson lighting, surreal design, and audio that rattles your bones and leaves them haunted.

A huge part of that is the soundtrack. Composed by a group named Goblin using the then-revolutionary System 55 Moog synthesizer, it’s a landmark in horror music. It’s wild, unsettling, and unforgettable—a frenzied cocktail of synths, whispered incantations, and pounding rhythms. You don’t just hear it. You feel it, crawling along your spine. It’s a defining piece of Argento’s horror aesthetic, and one of the reasons the film remains such an iconic sensory experience.

Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria takes the same basic premise—outsider, cursed school—and expands it into something colder, denser, and infinitely more haunted. Where Argento delivered maximalist style, Guadagnino offers thematic weight. Set in Cold War-era Berlin, the remake uses the dance academy as a microcosm of fractured national identity, generational trauma, and political anxiety. It’s not just creepy—it’s confrontational. The witches’ internal vote to resurrect an ancient mother figure becomes a metaphor for cycles of violence, silence, and institutional rot. Watch it now and it feels prophetic.

That deeper political engagement split critics. Sure, it won the Robert Altman Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, but it also made people squirm, especially critics uncomfortable with its treatment of feminine power. Andrea Thompson of The Chicago Reader wrote, “The essence of Suspiria is feminine as well, and it likewise cries out for a female director.” Fair enough. But look closer: this is a film obsessed with how systems of power operate in and through women—their pain, their bodies, their legacies. When The Washington Post‘s Sonia Rao cited an “undercurrent of misogyny,” you have to wonder: are we uncomfortable with the film, or with what it’s showing us? Because the violence isn’t gratuitous—it’s deeply intentional. Guadagnino isn’t exploiting the female body. He’s revealing how it’s already been exploited: by history, by power, by silence.

And that discomfort? It’s embedded in every note of Yorke’s score. His first-ever film composition is a revelation—a moody, analog-heavy dirge that sways between beauty and dread. It sounds like memory decaying. It sounds like reckoning. Synths hum like electricity before a storm. Strings groan and warp like broken machinery. There are tracks that ache, and tracks that crawl. And all of it pulls you deeper into the film’s unsettling emotional space. Yorke’s not just scoring the movie, he’s haunting it.

Just listen to the second track, where Susie’s violent dance audition fractures another dancer’s body. It’s a moment of horror, sure—bones snap, skin contorts—but it’s also operatic, ritualistic. And Yorke’s music leans into that contradiction. His melodies aren’t screaming. They’re whispering. Minimal, eerie, almost sorrowful. You should watch that scene with headphones on. Because what Yorke’s doing here is radical—he’s showing how choreography becomes a form of domination. Power moves through bodies like possession. And the music doesn’t just underline that—it feels it.

In that moment, Yorke’s instrumentation becomes its own kind of spell. He uses synths to create textures that feel both ancient and futuristic. Strings are stretched and warped until they sound inhuman. Percussion stutters in off-kilter time signatures, making the rhythm feel unstable, threatening. The music disorients you—just like the dance. And that’s the point. This isn’t just horror. It’s a reckoning disguised as ritual.

And then there’s the finale—chaotic, biblical, and somehow still quiet. Susie opens her chest. Blood pours. Bodies explode. And over it all, Yorke sings “Unmade.” Come under my wings, under my wings, we’re unmade. It’s one of the most affecting horror climaxes in recent memory. Sparse piano chords. Ethereal falsetto. A ghostly choir. You could close your eyes and cry. But don’t—you’ll miss the carnage. And that’s the genius of it. This isn’t just violence for shock—it’s a reckoning. The scene crystallizes everything the film’s been building toward: how systems of power move through women, and how women, in turn, remake or destroy those systems from the inside. Susie isn’t just possessed—she’s ascended. And Yorke’s music doesn’t resist that transformation; it sanctifies it. The music says healing. The visuals say destruction. It’s a contradiction so powerful it lingers long after the credits roll.

Guadagnino’s Suspiria doesn’t just reimagine a cult classic—it weaponizes it. In an era where people are still afraid of women with power— in politics, in media, in storytelling— Suspiria dares to ask why. And the answer is unsettling: because power, when embodied by women, threatens systems built on control, obedience, and historical amnesia. That’s the film’s deepest horror—not just witches or gore, but what happens when the oppressed seize the tools of power and reshape them. Guadagnino connects this fear directly to the rise of fascism—to the way violence repeats when nations fail to confront their pasts, and to the way authoritarianism thrives on suppressing truth, memory, and female agency. Suspiria uses horror to make that cycle visible. It’s uncomfortable, yes. But it’s supposed to be. This is horror that thinks. That feels. That warns. So watch it now. Seriously. Rewatch it. Turn up the volume. Let it crawl under your skin. Because Suspiria isn’t looking backward—it’s staring us dead in the face.