I think, pound for pound, Dario Argento is the most pretentious filmmaker that ever lived. Not content to scare us with suspense or gore, he feels the need to load everything up with mounds of incomprehensible backstory and symbolism. I was lost before the opening credits were done. For the first hour I didn’t care, because of all the radical color saturation and Keith Emerson’s gothic prog-rock score. Then my ass started hurting. By the time the ending came and it was time for special effects I was laughing. This movie is a joke, and not in a good way. Dude just takes himself way too seriously and it’s a shame so many people eat this stuff up. For some reason, I still am willing to defend Suspiria, but there the plot, asinine as it may be, at least exists in a cogent form. Here it is all sound and light show and I won’t buy that in a dopey slasher picture.