IF you’re going to remake a film like Suspiria, an incendiary assault on the senses from legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento, then you better not pull any punches.

More than 40 years on, director Luca Guadagnino certainly doesn’t do that with what is not so much a remake per se but an interpretive dance update in keeping with the chapter-segmented plot which provides lots to dig your teeth into.

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It centres on a world-renowned dance company in a divided Berlin of 1977 where bright-eyed and naturally talented dancer Susie (Dakota Johnson) arrives eager to prove she belongs. Lucky for her, a spot just opened up, after previous dancer Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz, whose maniacal performance greets us in the film’s striking opening scene) left under mysterious circumstances.

After proving herself with a distinctive dance, Susie is welcomed by lead teacher Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). But as she progresses with her training, she starts to notice a menacing atmosphere that seems to engulf the building, its residents and an old psychiatrist (also played by Swinton under heavy make-up) with ties to its past.

Suspiria is a two-and-a-half-hour knife to the throat of a film, one that grabs its audience and myriad of themes with both hands and shakes them about violently. The nature of obsession; the need to attain perfection; the prototypical horrors of our lives being under control of outside forces; the idea of what we inherit down through the generations doing more harm than good – the surface shock value invites you to pierce through into thematically rewarding foundations.

Guadagnino has made some striking films in the past, not least the sun-kissed beauty that is romance Call Me By Your Name, but nothing quite like this. Working from a layered script by his A Bigger Splash writer David Kajganich, it is purposefully and emphatically never an easy watch as he fills every square inch of the narrative with sinister tension and unsettling visuals, manoeuvring a range of compelling performances – Johnson’s ambiguous dance prodigy offset against Swinton’s encouraging yet ruthless teacher – on its way to a nightmarish, cackling, jaw-dropping finale.

It’s an unforgettable film, attained by any means necessary; at once hypnotic and mad, frustrating and captivating, silly but so self-aware of this, difficult and self-indulgent but also fascinatingly probing and endlessly ambitious in structure, themes and the out-there places it’s willing to take the audience.

There’s a lot to digest in an alluring and potent concoction that doesn’t neatly fit together by design. The fun, if you can call it that, is in experiencing that very juxtaposition and coming out the other side not knowing quite how to react.