Jessica Harper Checks In From The SUSPIRIA Remake

Social media is where we find out everything these days: celebrity deaths, casting announcements, ex-girlfriends getting married, having kids, building lives of their own and forgetting you ever existed. It’s fine! It’s fine. It is. It’s fine.

Today we learn via Facebook that the star of the original Suspiria, Jessica Harper, is currently in Berlin to film what she calls “a cameo” in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece.

Cameo, eh? The IMDb has Ms. Harper as fifth-billed (playing “Anke”) in this new Suspiria, so it’s unclear how significant a role this will end up being. Still, always nice seeing Phoenix herself on the screen.

And she’s joining an interesting cast for sure: Dakota Johnson will be playing the ballet student role originated by Ms. Harper, while Chloë Grace Moretz will, one assumes, play a fellow student. Tilda Swinton, in paparazzi pics we can’t publish here, is looking gnarly as hell as one of the “teachers” at the school.

I’ve previously said that a remake of Suspiria would be like trying to remake a nightmare, or a feeling. It’s not the plot that’s so special, but the distinct tone. (I’ve also said that about Halloween, so it’s interesting to note that the original director attached to a Suspiria remake, David Gordon Green, has since fucked off to Haddonfield.) How are you guys feeling about this remake?

As a reward for stopping by, please treat yourself to the 1977 Suspiria trailer that gave me the wiggins as a child.