The Suspiria Prosthetic Designers Studied Forensics for the Gruesome Deaths

Suspiria is filled with gory and grotesque moments that will turn your blood to ice in your veins. Director Luca Guadagnino’s masterful suspense keeps you on the edge of terror for the full two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Want to cut to the chase? Prosthetics designer Mark Coulier runs through a highlight of the most gruesome moments in under 5 minutes and how they achieved all of those effects.

If you have not yet seen Suspiria click away now. The very start of the video gives away the main plot followed by many of the best surprises in the film.

Coulier starts with the most disturbing scene first. It’s a beautiful dance sequence with unthinkably horrific consequences, which makes it even more unnerving. Olga (Elena Fokina) attempts to leave the dance school and her body is horrifyingly contorted. Prosthetics and fake limbs give the character a look of being twisted into a painful knot of body parts. If you think horror filmmaking amounts to just cheap blood splatter, this sequence will absolutely change your mind. These are really complex creations with a highly effective result.

Not everyone who disobeys the order gets their bodies twisted around. Some are just sliced open. Coulier and his team made elaborate models on clay based on depictions of the human body form forensics books. These deaths are not only shocking but also anatomically correct.

If you weren’t aware, Tilda Swinton plays more than one character in the film, and one of them meets a gruesome fate. Another involves what appears to be a full body prosthetic. Her entire anatomy is transformed into an age and warped witch. You definitely cannot say that the woman fears the makeup chair. To put on all of these different looks must have taken hours.

Suspiria is still in some theaters and you can buy a copy to bring home next month.

Featured Image: Tilda Swinton as Madam Blanc stars in Suspiria. Alessio Bolzoni/Amazon Studios. Courtesy of Amazon Studios