Dario Argento’s iconic Italian horror Suspiria is getting the full remake treatment from Luca Guadagnino, with one major exception: the new version is an entire hour longer than the 1977 original masterpiece. But why?
It might have something to do with that hook.
On Tuesday, the official (and sassy) Twitter account for Suspiria from Amazon Studios tweeted out a poll asking about the film’s length of 152 minutes. “You might have seen that #Suspiria is 152 minutes,” the account tweeted. “How much of it will you be able to watch?”
The poll included four options: “All of it, obviously”; “Are my eyes covered?”; “Until the hook appears”; and “Three minutes max.” The highest choice voted as of this writing is “All of it, obviously,” which polled at 76%.
“Three minutes max” is the lowest at just 8%. And by the way, if the remake is anything like the original, the three minute mark gets you to Susie’s airport pick-up, which isn’t scary but deeply unsettling and atmospheric.
So why is Suspiria an entire hour longer than the original, a lean 91-minute film that scared the bejeezus out of audiences back in the day? Dig around the film’s Twitter and you’ll see a lot of references to “The Hook,” a curved piece of sharp metal like a tooth that has a prominent place in the film’s dark trailer.
It’s a new piece of iconography the film is hyping up hard, and it’s something that’s not in the original.
Is this new scene adding to the film’s length?
For starters, the Hook was teased by Guadagnino himself, in a personal message to fans shared on the Twitter account. At the end of the video message, the director of Call Me By Your Name whips out the thing like it’s a toy.
The Hook quickly became a minor meme for Suspiria fans.
About a month later in June, when the “Ranked” meme started popping off on Twitter, Suspiria joined in on the fun with yet another mention of the dreaded Hook.
Here are more tweets from July in which the Suspiria account brings up the damn hook again.
There was also THIS GIF.
And then finally, the recent poll, which once again mentions the Hook. With the amount of attention directed towards this ominous tool, it’s no wonder that Guadagnino’s Suspiria is an entire hour longer than the original. You might even say they have us hooked.
Suspiria will be released in theaters on November 2.
