Review: Crimson Peak

Twisting warped fairy tales around a backdrop of the Spanish civil war or weaving neon blooded monster magic into the standard Hollywood doomsday flick, an eye for incredible visuals and a wicked streak that veers wildly from the darkly comical to the just plain dark is always to be expected from Guillermo del Toro. Mixing the macabre with the magnificent is something of a calling card and Crimson Peak takes his penchant for the grisly and goes wild with it. But this is an entirely different kaiju to the restrained softly, softly ghost story chills of The Devils Backbone. This is pedal down, rampant melodrama. It’s brimming with murder, mystery, intrigue and has a few ghosts thrown in along the way.

Would-be writer and New York State native Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) is swept off her feet by the dashing but mysterious Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston) in a rushed and widely disapproved of marriage that follows on the heels of family tragedy. She is then swiftly escorted back to the echoing Cumbrian countryside where Sharpe and his sister Lucille (Chastain) live swathed in secrecy, in the visual metaphor for the their dwindling ancestral fortune that is the gorgeously dilapidated Allerdale Hall. The house holds a grim past and is slowly sinking into the oozing red clay that affords it the colloquial title of Crimson Peak. And yes, if that sounds like a familiar retread of many gothic romances, it’s probably because it is. Del Toro’s sumptuous visuals, helped in great part by the magnificent costumes of Kate Hawley, are wildly original and creative, but the same cannot be said for the plot which feels like it could have been lifted from a Brontë novel.

Atmosphere is laid on thick, but the soap opera plot twists can be undone with relative ease and, considering the supernatural elements, the grand reveal feels unmistakably understated in the context of all the swirling repulsive pantomime madness. The main takeaway seems to be the debauched terrors of old-money England, and that’s hardly a surprise at all.

Maybe that’s not Del Toro’s fault but merely presumption on my part. Edith announces very early on when questioned about her novel that it is not a ‘ghost story’ but a ‘story with a ghost in it.’ When a film spells out its intentions as blatantly as that you can hardly blame it for not adhering to your own expectations. But what the ghosts lack in significance, they make up for in sheer grotesque brilliance. Blood red viscous half-entities dripping with tendrils and gore, dragging their contorted skeletal figures forward, or lurching down hallways and wailing all the while, they’re a reminder that the director knows how to summon up a mortifying monster when needed. But, as horrifying as they are, extended exposure and inspection of their digitally generated forms leaves a slight hankering for the authenticity and terrible beauty of the prosthetics and costuming of the genre-lifting creations that populated Pan’s Labyrinth.

Wasikowska makes a decent effort of the heroine lost in the antiquated depravity of old world nobility and Hiddleston does the dark and dashing Brit role that he has all but perfected. But it’s Chastain’s Dickensian turn as frosty Lucille Sharpe that provides the film with much of its sinister energy. Eerily haunting the peripherals of the narrative, and then stepping forward to elevate the finale from a schlocky scramble to a maniacal showdown, her performance lies in perfect sync with the excesses of the whole production. A gothic horror populated with gory ghosts and decaying mansions needs its shadowy scene-chewing aristocrat.

However, for such an extravagant production, it often feels as though the substantial thrills come at a faltering pace. The film takes long pauses to forgivably dwindle on the beautiful production design and squeeze in a few heavy handed metaphors, including a particularly grizzly one involving ants and a butterfly. But unlike many modern horrors that err toward false starts and double bluffs before introducing anything ghostly, when something does go bump in the night, a ghoulish encounter is sure to follow. Bathos doesn’t appear to be part of Del Toro’s vocabulary. And when we do get our shrieking, staggering over the top moments of horror, it can sometimes feel just too ridiculous, and loses the keenness of a real good fright. But then, what else would suit a film with such Hammer pastiche aspirations?

At one point when discussing impending spinsterhood, Edith announces that she hopes to take after Shelley and die a widow, and this film certainly feels like something the genre elites would be proud of. This is an archaic formula repackaged for modern audiences and formed with love, admiration and an incredible eye. Crimson Peak is pulpy, gothic-romance, silent movie style fun. It’s full of swooning, candle-clutching maidens in billowy white robes descending into forbidden basements and sharply dressed debonair strangers living amongst symbols of crumbling gentility and Victorian era debauchery. Visually and thematically lavish, it will undoubtedly be accused of style over substance, and it unfortunately never quite reaches the height of madness that it threatens to, too often slowing down to make way for an overworked and derivative plot. But as haunted houses go, it’s got enough gleefully grim flair and fun to make it worth the price of a ticket.

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