I'm a huge fan of the original. It is one of my favorite horror films period and I couldn't care less about the lack of story or coherence. Really.

I'm also not a huge fan of remakes, unless they do something very different while still staying faithful somehow to the original. Good remakes? The Thing or The Fly. Bad remakes? Halloween (Rob Zombie) or Nightmare On Elm Street.

That being said, I had quite some hopes for Luca Guadagninos rendition of the italo cinema classic, because the trailers looked really promising in the sense of a remake how I'd imagine it.

And it actually came out that way! No copying of the iconic lighting, different development of the story and even a different setting while remaining to contain the overall mystery and mood.

So my expectations were up quite a bit.

I pretty much liked almost everything the film did up until the dance finale in the basement. From there on out, I felt kinda lost at what to think about it and questioned myself if I even fucking get it. Just kinda confusing.

I guess they went out of budget there too? Because some of that CGI gore at the end looked terrible. Unlike the very awesome body horror during on of the dances at the very beginning of the film. That must've been practical and it was glorious.

The dance scenes were very awesome anyway, I liked them all. They came out very well choreographed and appeared to be outright evil.

Also on the topic of added story and depth:

Moving the setting to Berlin, having feminism play a bigger role, explaining the aspects of nazi germany and the so called "Deutscher Herbst" (german fall) of terror, I felt that Luca tried to desperately add depth to a film, that just didn't need any but could've handled it. Many people liked this, and I think it would've been a nice addition, but the problem with so many films, it only suggests depth. I like to call it surfacedepth. Things that seem like they have a lot going on, but ultimately fail to expand on the topics because there are too many knots to properly tie up.

Also I really didn't care for Klemperer at all. His role and plot was so uninteresting. I understand that Tilda Swinton played him too (because of the all female maincast I suppose?) but it just didn't fit in and the female voice threw me off.

I guess this is a hard case of "mother!". Definitely a powerful cinema experience. I'll have to rewatch it, as there's just too much to digest at first. But my first impression is that Luca just tried too hard to make it artsy and meaningful. It remains quite a good film though, but a some cuts wouldn't have hurt.

At last, fuck off cinema owner. I saw this at an arthouse theatre that was terribly built. So during the quiet scenes, which there were a lot of, I had to listen to Queen from the theatre next to me.