Crimson Peak – film review

In a horror landscape dominated by shaky-cam low-budget films and cobbled together sequels, the return of the genre’s greatest contemporary artist, Guillermo del Toro, is a welcomed sight. Guillermo is a horror craftsman, a director whose creations promise an injection of creativity in a genre endlessly feeding on itself. However, he made Pan’s Labyrinth over ten years ago now, and since then his only noticeable work was the big, dumb, fun monster blockbuster Pacific Rim. He’s spent his time since, not making horror but a sequel to Pacific Rim, which seems to be stuck in production limbo. He also had a producer credit for the teeth-gratingly awful horror film Don’t be afraid of the dark. Guillermo needs to make something special to stave off a critical backlash. Is this it, or did he peak with Pan’s Labyrinth?

In Crimson Peak, he returns to territory he explored in his Spanish Civil War set chiller The Devil’s Backbone. It’s a gothic ghost story partly set in 18th century America and partly in an eerie old English mansion. The film concerns the plight of an aspiring horror fiction writer Mia Wasikowska. After writing a piece of fiction containing ghosts, her story becomes a case of life imitating art, when she is visited by a ghoulish apparition who warns her to beware of Crimson Peak. Shortly after, she is visited by two mysterious figures, a land baron called Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) who seek financing for their innovative mining technology. Thomas cuts a dashing, eloquent figure and it isn’t long before Mia begins to fall for his charm. After an incident leaves her with little to hold her in the family home, she decides to follow her heart by accompanying her beloved to his home country where he resides in a decadent yet dilapidated mansion. But clearly it will be difficult for Mia to adjust to life here and someone or something appears to be communicating with her from beyond the grave….

For casual horror fans who just want to see something a bit spooky and unsettling this Halloween, Crimson Peak will no doubt deliver. However, for die hard horror fans and long-time del Toro followers, the film is going to prove to be very disappointing as they will eventually spot just how derivative the film is.

The great positives of the film are all in the visual department. It is hard to imagine a more opulent and extravagant looking set design for a horror film than those the director of Pan‘s Labyrinth uses in his latest film. If you wanted to argue it is the most beautiful horror movie ever made, you could reference many scenes to support your case. The attention to detail is very impressive and Del Toro gives clever little plot footnotes to justify why exactly his sets are literally oozing crimson. We are dealing with a visual artist here who understands how to light a scene for maximum atmosphere; a director who knows how to use shadowy German expressionism to evoke an uneasy feeling in his audience. On a visual level, the film impresses. The story however eventually begins to look as well-worn and creaky as the ancient house the film takes place in.

The ghosts of the films that del Toro heavily borrows from soon cast long shadows over the story for anyone familiar with certain classic horror films. The film owes an obvious massive debt to The Shining and as hard as del Toro tries in this to use CGI to produce a scare as nerve-shredding as the bathroom scene or twins-in-the-hallway scene in Kubrick’s masterpiece, he doesn’t come close. It is really hard to produce genuine frights with CGI – some of the monster effects in this are about as frightening as something in the late nineties horror films like House on Haunted Hill. The CGI is at odds with the gothic setting and it nullifies the effect he was going for.

The sound design to produce a horror effect and the vulnerability of the central character will be suspiciously familiar to anyway who has seen Robert Wise’s The Haunting. And the oppressive marriage plot-line that provides the flesh of the story in Crimson Peak has been completely ripped off from Les Diaboliques. It also takes ideas from other ghost films like The Sixth Sense, The Changeling and there is also a lot of retooling of his second favourite film The Uninvited in Crimson Peak too.

It’s a story built from the parts of other stories then, but the biggest problem with it is that it’s narrative is clunky and obvious. Those who bother to give it a few minutes’ reflection will entirely unravel it. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to detect that there is something very suspect about a key death that befalls a character early on. And yet, no one bothers to launch the most preliminary investigation. Also, why exactly can Mia be contacted by ghosts across two continents? Is she some sort of ghost whisperer? Guillermo del Toro earnestly tries to build suspense around the dark secrets that are allegedly hidden in the house, but it’s a very easy story to decode and predict. Those secrets are not very well buried; they couldn’t be anymore sign-posted if they were written on the haunted house walls in blood.

When the reveals come, you find yourself unmoved, rather than unnerved. Two of the characters give themselves away with the slightest of glances, and then the whole film hinges on their alleged duplicity. The central character loses credibility early on too; she changes from astute and perceptive to incredulously naive. Oh, and the romantic plot-line is insipid and hard to believe in from the very beginning.

Come the ‘climax’ you want the film to have more depth and dark secrets to reveal, but it is a big empty shell of a film – a very basic horror story dressed up to look like something more grandiose and monumental.

Ironically the least scary thing about the film is the ghosts. Perhaps that’s due to Del Toro’s running theme of making fiends in the living-world look more monstrous than those in the supernatural, but before his tone seemed fresh and interesting and now it seems underwhelming and routine.

It’s telling of how authentically creepy the set design is that the ghosts actually detract from the ominous mood when they appear. If the film does create any scares, they all emanate from Jessica Chastain, who is terrifically terrifying performing in the film’s most provocative role. Her acerbic and icy delivery of lines is the only thing that really puts a chill up the spine. Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston are both perfectly suited to their roles, but come the credits, it’s Chastain who leaves the most vivid impression.

The ghosts are more garish than ghoulish, and ultimately, Guillermo del Toro’s film suffers from the same problems as Tim Burton’s films in that the storytelling doesn’t match the visual artistry for horror intensity. While it still may prove to be the best of the Halloween horror releases, by Guillermo Del Toro’s standards, it’s more of a dip than a peak.  6/10