“It’s not a ghost story. It’s a story with a ghost in it.” Such are the words that indicate the direction in which Guillermo del Toro’s gothic romantic/thriller Crimson Peak will be heading. Don’t believe the advertisements, kids. This isn’t the haunted house picture they’re selling you.
Based on the commercials, one might think – as I did – that Crimson Peak would be a nail biting, erotically charged ghost story. You – like me – would be wrong. However, co-writer/director del Toro instead has crafted a good looking, yet anticlimactic period drama that doesn’t so much revolve around ghostly scares but features ghosts in the story.
Mia Wasikowska plays Edith Cushing (her surname likely being a nod to classic Hammer Horror actor Peter Cushing), an aspiring Mary Shelley wannabe. Her life becomes complicated when she catches the heart of a desperate English nobleman – Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston).
Before she knows it, she’s been whisked off to live with Sharpe in his ominous, decaying estate with his equally ominous sister – Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain). Things quickly get weird, though not weird enough to be disturbing and the weirdness never really amounts to any serious tension.
I admire this film more than I like it. The heart and soul of the director is on clear display in this movie and I appreciate the immense detail del Toro has put into the script and into the scenery. The actors are all game for the material. Wasikowska is a likeable, determined, smart and capable hero.
Hiddleston easily switches between warmth and charm and sinister planning. Chastain provides the film with an insanely watchable, cold villainess. Charlie Hunnam even shows up in a few key scenes as Wasikowska’s doctor friend with a penchant for reading mystery novels. He’s reliable and believable in every scene that he’s in.
The art directing team has created a wonderful visual design for the picture and the camera work by Dan Lausten is marvelously subtle. So what’s the problem? The problem is that even though there are a lot of great parts, they don’t add up to much of a whole.
Some spooky stuff happens. The romance between Wasikowska and Hiddleston is really engaging in some scenes and then cold and distant in others. Chastain gets to sneer a lot, but her character doesn’t get much more to do than that until the end.
Despite what sounds like a lukewarm review, I think I actually would rewatch Crimson Peak. I wonder if my disliking of the film was a product of the advertising. This film is being sold – rather irresponsibly – as a terrifying, horror special effects bonanza.
What I ended up getting instead was a film more in line with the slow burn of Robert Weiss’s The Haunting (another film that I admire more than I enjoy). I would recommend this film to filmgoers and fans that enjoy movies like the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker’s Dracula or the Kenneth Branagh film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Both films work slowly, evoke a horror in the mind as opposed to guttural reactions, and use powerful images to evoke the chills as opposed to all-out thrills. However, if you are looking for a film this Halloween more in line to make you jump out of your seat screaming, check out The Visit.
Crimson Peak isn’t a bad film. It’s well made, it’s well acted, and its premise is original enough that it kept my attention throughout its runtime. It is, however, not the film that the advertising team wishes that it were.
I’m not telling you to stay away from Crimson Peak. I just want you to know the kind of movie you’re really going to see when you pay $11.50
Brian Laughran
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