A late winter's day, overcast, as a carriage makes its way up the red-clay drive-way of the grounds to
the Gothic mansion that is Allerdale Hall in Cumberland, England. The open carriage laden with luggage pulls up out front, the dirty, elderly caretaker greets the arrivals, the lord of the manor Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his new young American wife Edith (Mia Wasikowska). Edith's welcome by the caretaker is polite, if a tad odd but the sudden arrival of a small Papillion dog surprises the newlyweds, to the delight of Edith and chagrin of Thomas. Edith presses inside the house, her new home, a dark, massive and open manor, her splendid ruffly grey dress with delicate flower arrangements upon it contrasts to the ruinous dark green and mahogany interior of the building, not to mention it's state of decay with dead flies and leaves littering the floor due to the open roof. The house creaks, groans, distant cries and winds mimic both agony and breathing. Edith searches the house, her inquisitiveness seeming to further the apparent life within the house, her new home. Crimson Peak is the latest film from Mexican cult director Guillermo del Toro, the film stars Wasikowska, Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain and Charlie Hunnam and follows Wasikowska's Edith as she marries the mysterious but charming Sharpe and moves in with him and his sister Lucille to the ludicrously large and certainly haunted Allerdale Hall, otherwise known as the Crimson Peak due to the red clay underground that seeps into the snow to a terrifying affect, and soon sets about uncovering the mysteries of the mansion as she is haunted by ghosts.
Guillermo del Toro is a director very much about style over substance, his films, regardless of their overt quality, are all bursting with inspired, mythic art and designs, and his stories often take the form of or relate to fairy-tales, myths and legends and thus Crimson Peak is book-ended with poetic narration and its title sequence is a CGI rendering of a classic fairy-tale book being opened. The plot, setting and design of the film all condition the audience to accept the film as a faery story rather than period horror-drama, there's even a line in the film in which Edith describes the manuscript she's writing as "not a ghost story but a story with a ghost in it", a phrase that certainly applies to the horror genre in this film. Del Toro's ability to build a world is central to how he builds his characters, his film and directing style, which often involves a thematic exploration on family and place (Hellboy, Mako in Pacific Rim, the farm in Pan's Labyrinth). Scenes open with the moving camera finding it's way around the world before coming to the character or emotion of the scene and often-times using a neat transition such as a match-cut or shrinking the frame down to a single detail in the shot such as a butterfly or ring. The latter method being an overt throw-back to the editing of early cinema, close to the setting of this film, and even further relates to the writing and direction of Crimson Peak which both explicitly and implicitly engage with the different media's of the time, their engagement with death, as well as references to other films and the themes of memory and past.
Written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins who previously collaborated on del Toro's most celebrated film, Pan's Labyrinth, much of the script and editing of Crimson Peak is a return to form following the earnest, gleeful but ultimately (and purposely) average script of Pacific Rim, but the occasional flash of the script or editing can be cancelled out by the failings. Nice character details such as Hunnam's doctor being a fan of Sherlock Holmes thus providing a subtle justification for his heightened investigative nature is forgotten in the face predictable and soon-to-be-cliched third act revelation. In the opposite vein the perhaps too-brutal editing of early scenes is but a scant memory in the presence of some delightful match-cuts and scene transitions. Mia Wasikowska has built a career off playing waif-ish, inquisitive but strong-willed bourgeoisie protagonists with a dark side (see the excellent Stoker and The Double by Park Chan-wook and Richard Ayoade, respectively), and her role as Edith is another notch in that belt, though this is a perfect film for that kind of performance. Tom Hiddleston's effortless charm takes centre-stage as he seduces Edith but within his pauses and puppy-like blue eyes there is some depth and doubt that makes Sharpe more memorable in stark contrast to Charlie Hunnam who, while not bad, just doesn't quite fit in with the film. Chastain's aloof Lucille may be the topic of some debate but her portrayal felt like a well-travelled path, bringing little new or strong to the role until the later moments of the film, and even then the writing/scenario felt cliched instead.
While throughout the film there are several nods to classic films that obviously influenced del Toro, the
red ball from
The Changeling being one of the more overt references, the finale (without spoiling too much I hope)is particularly reminiscent. It's structure is almost beat-for-beat the same as The Shining, an influence which hangs over this film like a cloud, but the costuming and set design resembles the first
Silent Hill adaptation, and
for good reason. While marketed as a Gothic horror-romance,
Crimson Peak is sparsely decorated with moments of great dread ruined by cheap jump-scares, though the CGI ghosts do look wonderful, unique and disturbing. The narrative of a del Toro film is usually secondary to the world and atmosphere it's always a disappointing experience to be able to predict the very next event in a film and though
Crimson Peak is perhaps the most
gorgeously produced film of the year, and once again del Toro has created a fantastical breathing world and likely his objectively best film since
Pan's Labyrinth,
Peak is another film by del Toro that falls just short of being great.
