Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake seemes to be making some pretty cool choices — first, it cast Tilda Swinton, then, it cast Dakota Johnson, who, despite becoming known for 50 Shades, is quite talented at acting in things where she doesn’t merely stare with tentative titillation at an emotionally damaged businessman and his high-end riding crops. (Guadagino’s A Bigger Splash was one of those films.)
The latest casting choice therefore could be potentially equally deliberate or be the first red flag about the generally uninspired nature of remakes (apart from the inherent red-flag every remake — let alone the remake of Dario Argento’s classic — bears and has to prove itself against). It’s just been announced that Chloë Grace Moretz is also joining the cast, thus rendering this a part of what seems to be a growing trend of automatically casting Chloë Grace Moretz as the millennial version of past horror movie characters. Of course, who knows, this could be a good, specific casting choice — and Moretz could be great in it (she was perfect as the career-threatening fresh Hollywood movie star in Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria) — it just oddly recalls these other recent remakes.
Variety reported the news of Moretz boarding the project, though it is not yet known what role she’ll be playing. (Or whether the roles will actually correspond with those of the original film — as it seems like Guadagnino has a pretty specific, though actually not modernized or even that relocated, new vision for it; his version supposedly still takes place in the year the original was released — 1977 — and moves the setting from Freiberg to Berlin.)
The film is being written by David Kajganich, who also penned the screenplay for A Bigger Splash.