– Film Review by Cate Marquis –
“Crimson Peak” serves up gorgeous, bloody Gothic mess
Director Guillermo del Toro says his new film “Crimson Peak” aims to be a Gothic romance in the style of 1940s genre classics “Dragonwyck” and “Jane Eyre.” The big-budget production is filled with lush Victorian costumes and eerie Gothic mansions, and boasts a top-notch cast including Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, and Charlie Hunnam. But it also has one foot in the ’50s-’60s low-budget buckets-o-blood horror world of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and director Roger Corman, plus a nod to Tim Burton.
This is one weird film. With its Gothic, ghostly theme and fabulous over-the-top costumes and sets, it looks perfect for Halloween.
One thing is sure about “Crimson Peak” – it is no “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the director’s Oscar-winning film. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is a masterpiece; “Crimson Peak” is something else, although exactly what is not exactly clear.
Visually lush and color-drenched, the art direction is by far the film’s strongest point. Despite the eye candy, the story is filled with familiar types of the genre, along with references to Gothic literature – particularly “Jane Eyre” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” One might be tempted to call this film almost comic, in a gallows-humor way, except the gory violence that occasionally pops up is just too gruesome.. It does share one thing in common with “Pan’s Labyrinth” – a story with ghostly supernatural beings and ghastly human beings.
In the early 1900s Buffalo, New York, innocent 18-year-old Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), the only child of wealthy, widower Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), is swept off her feet by a handsome but penniless British aristocrat, Lord Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), to the dismay of her father and former childhood friend Dr. Alan McMichael (Hunnam) who is plainly pining for her. Having lost her mother to cholera when she was a child, blonde-haired beauty Edith is haunted – literally – by an apparition of her dead mother. Now she is busy working on a novel, which she describes as a “story with ghosts rather than a ghost story,”
The baronet is visiting America to raise funds to build a machine he designed to mine the high-quality red brick clay that is so abundant on his ancestral lands. Traveling with Lord Thomas is his sister, Lady Lucille (Chastain) – a stunning beauty with the same black hair and blues eyes as her brother, and a taste for red dresses.
Our first hint there is more than Gothic romance afoot here is the sample of clay that Lord Thomas has brought with him to show his potential investors. Rather than the expected dull brick red, this clay is bright crimson, like blood, which gives it a particularly gruesome appearance.
After her father’s sudden, mysterious death,Thomas and Edith marry, and the bride is whisked away to her new home, a Gothic mansion in a remote area of Scotland. From the outside, the dark mansion looks grand and imposing but inside it is in a state of decay. The house is sinking into the bloody clay, which oozes up through the floorboards, while the hole in the roof lets in a steady stream of autumn leaves and later snow. Gray moths flit about everywhere.
Yet all the eerie doings and violent acts are carried out with a surprising emotional coolness, even the romance. Despite the talented cast, these characters show little emotion and even the passionate romance between Thomas and Edith generates very little heat. The only exception is Chastain, whose wild, edgy Lucille has occasional fiery outbursts..
But why all this visual flash with so little beneath it? One can only guess.
Overall, “Crimson Peak” is a beautiful mess, whose best point is its gorgeous art direction.
