What actually happens
Nobody warned Ohio about the dance school
In autumn 1977, during what Germany calls the German Autumn, Susie Bannion, who grew up in a Mennonite family in Ohio, gets into the Markos Dance Academy in West Berlin. The school is still dealing with the disappearance of a student named Patricia Hingle, who told her psychotherapist, Josef Klemperer, that a coven of witches controls the academy. Patricia left journals in his office about the Three Mothers: Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Tenebrarum and Mater Lachrymarum, a trio of witches older than Christianity. Klemperer waves the whole thing off at first, but once Patricia is gone he starts to suspect the academy of something.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
The mirror room has hooks
Early on, during a rehearsal, a Soviet student named Olga loses her temper at Madame Blanc and storms out. She tries to leave with her things but ends up alone in a room lined with mirrors. Back in the studio, Susie performs an aggressive dance, and every movement she makes hurts Olga in the mirror room, breaking her bones and damaging her organs. Several matrons then haul Olga's mangled body away with large hooks. That is the scene people warn each other about. Afterward the matrons hold an informal election on who will lead the coven, Madame Blanc or Mother Markos, the old, badly disfigured witch the academy is named after. Markos gets the most support. Miss Griffith, the most sheepish of the matrons, then kills herself.
Rehearsals for Volk and a very long walk with Anke
Susie befriends a classmate named Sara, and the two try to find out what happened to Olga and Patricia, only to discover that the academy has wiped away every trace of them. Susie rises quickly as Blanc's protégée and is picked to lead the academy's upcoming piece, Volk. Sara grows suspicious after meeting Klemperer, finds hidden hallways full of esoteric relics, and just before the performance follows a passage into the catacombs, where she finds Patricia badly withered. The matrons open holes in the floor, and Sara falls and breaks her leg. She still turns up midway through the show to dance her part in a trance, then collapses in pain. Blanc scolds Susie for getting in the way of the matrons' plans for Sara. The next day, while Susie sits through a celebration dinner with the matrons, Klemperer meets his wife Anke, who he thought was dead, at his dacha in East Germany. She explains that she staged her own death to get away from the Nazis. They walk across a checkpoint into West Berlin and arrive at the academy, where it dawns on him that Anke is really Miss Huller, a matron, and that he was lured there to watch a sabbath.
The ending, explained
After the dinner, Susie goes to a chamber where Blanc, the matrons, Mother Markos and a helpless Klemperer are waiting. Markos is meant to take over Susie's body. Susie renounces her own mother, who dies on her deathbed in Ohio at the same moment. The matrons cut open Sara to start the sabbath, but Blanc senses something is off and hesitates, and Markos nearly decapitates her. Susie announces that she is Mother Suspiriorum and has come to claim the academy and destroy Markos. She summons Death, who kills Markos and her most loyal matrons and spares the ones devoted to Blanc. Patricia, Olga and Sara, all ruined, beg to die, and Susie lets them. The next day the academy runs as usual, Miss Vendegast finds Blanc close to death, and the students are told Blanc has left. Susie visits Klemperer, apologizes for the coven, and tells him that Anke died at Theresienstadt. When she touches him he has a violent seizure that erases his memories.
The post-credits ruling
There is a post-credits scene. It shows Susie looking pleased with something outside the academy.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Suspiria scary?
Yes, Suspiria is a 7 out of 10 with high dread. It is slow, stylish and sinister, with a few body-horror scenes that people talk about afterward and a bloody finale.
How does Suspiria end?
Susie reveals she is Mother Suspiriorum and summons Death to kill Mother Markos and her loyal matrons. She then visits Klemperer, tells him how his wife Anke really died, and wipes his memory with a touch.
Does the dog die in Suspiria?
No dog dies in Suspiria.
Is there a post-credits scene in Suspiria?
Yes. Suspiria has a post-credits scene in which Susie looks approvingly at something outside the academy.
Who is Susie in Suspiria?
Susie turns out to be Mother Suspiriorum, one of the Three Mothers. In Suspiria she joins the academy to claim it from Mother Markos, who plans to use Susie as a new body.
