When a whole life is *literally* at stake on a stage, the tension can only be sky-high. For this reason, films set in professional dance academies are a good fit for the thriller genre. Classical dance is rigor, hard work, and pain. It is competition, ruthless, and you must prove you are the best. The dancers, on stage, must be applauded and cheered for. Natural selection (you need a suitable physique), training (very hard, often very bloody) and technical selection: in front of the teachers you have to perform the exercise with the correct steps, the right movements and an excellent acting interpretation. It is not enough to be good, you must be perfect. Here are the best dance thriller movies to watch to get you in the Halloween spirit.
Abigail (2024)
In this horror film co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, after a group of aspiring criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is keep watch over the little girl at night. In a secluded mansion, the kidnappers begin disappearing one by one and discover, to their own horror, that they are locked up with a very special little girl. A terrible little girl, in a ballet tutu.
The Red Shoes (1948)
A musical shot in technicolor, The Red Shoes is also the name of the ballet (inspired by the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen) that Boris Lermontov (played by Anton Walbrook), the charismatic impresario of a dance company wants to stage in the prestigious Covent Garden in London. Boris exerts a strong attraction on the prima ballerina Vicky (Moira Shearer) that puts her in crisis with her husband – and composer of the show’s music – Julian (Marius Goring). Near the end of the film, the woman, surprised, chooses Boris over Julian. As she is reaching the stage, an evil spirit is released from her red shoes that leads her first to abandon the theater and then to throw herself from a balcony above the railway. Julian reaches her and she, then dying, asks him to remove her red shoes, making the same gesture made by her character in the final scene of the ballet.
Suspiria (1977)
Inspired by the novel Suspiria De Profundis by Thomas de Quincey, Dario Argento’s film represents the first chapter of the so-called “three mothers trilogy” and stars Jessica Harper as Suzy Benner, an American girl who travels to Germany to enroll in the famous Freiburg Dance Academy. But on the evening of her arrival, under a relentless rain, something odd happens that sets off a series of horrifying events.
Black Swan (2010)
Black Swan is on of Natalie Portman’s greatest performances, thanks to which she won the Oscar for Best Actress and got to wear the tutu of the talented dancer Nina Sayers, lost many pounds and took ballet lessons for a year and a half. Her character, emotionally fragile due to the horrible relationship with her mother who still treats and controls her like a child, is chosen by the artistic director and his teacher Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) as the prima ballerina of the famous ballet, Swan Lake. Nina – who has always tried her best to be perfect – begins to slide into an abyss of madness and hallucinations, devoured by her own sensual and evil double: the Black Swan who challenges the White Swan.
Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018)
A remake of Dario Argento’s film, Luca Guadagnino’s equally horrifying Suspiria moves the story from Freiburg to Berlin in the late 1970s, a city divided by the Cold War. Dakota Johnson plays Susie, an American dancer who, upon arriving at the renowned Helena Markos Dance Company, is noticed by the company’s famous choreographer, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). The cast also includes Chloë Grace Moretz and Mia Goth.
Red Sparrow (2018)
Before moving on to the action thriller, Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow, based on the successful spy novel by former CIA agent Jason Matthews, shows us the past of Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), prima ballerina of the Bolshoi in Moscow forced to abandon her career as a dancer due to a horrible injury on stage during a show. She is then recruited into the “Sparrow School”, a Russian intelligence service where she is educated to become a lethal lover and seductress.
Nureyev – The white crow (2018)
Considered “the greatest dancer of all time,” the life of the legendary Rudolf Nureyev was fraught with tension. In the biopic directed by actor Ralph Fiennes, we see the brash and rebellious Rudy (Oleg Ivenko) join, at only 22, the iconic Kirov Ballet Company with which he traveled to Paris in 1961 for his first tour outside the Soviet Union. His unconventional behavior and his association with the young Parisian Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos) were not well received by the KGB officers who continued to follow him closely. The dancer realized that he had to pay dearly for his freedom.
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