This is one I came to rather late which believe me I regret now. October was a rather crowded month for releases, money needed to be prioritised and honestly at the time I thought that the English-Language debut of Yorgos Lanthimos needed far more support than a heavily marketed new film from a (relatively) more established director. Well shows what I know as Crimson Peak has long-since be labelled as another of Del Toro's under-performers, even as its gross reached $72 million worldwide. A great shame because it really does stand alongside Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth as one of his best films to date.
The reason for Crimson Peak's success as a film is the same reason behind every successful genre film these days which is a knowing sense of self. Despite all the ghosts and strange apparitions this is old school, Gothic melodrama that wears its skin transparently yet 100% embraces what it it. A lavish, elaborately staged, camping-performed romance starring a host of characters that are, bizzarely, both archetypal and colourfully realised.
The films stars Mia Wasikowska, and really is there any better actor to cast as an ethereal symbol of innocence?, as Edith Cushing. Edith is the daughter of a self-made businessman from Buffalo NY and an aspiring author of Gothic melodrama. So it makes perfect sense when she falls for the ultimate Byronic heroin Tom Hiddleston's Sir Thomas Sharpe. Sharpe is Baronet with his fortune exhausted and his estate literally crumbling around him and Hiddleston's performance sells the hell out of this. He exudes both villainy and weakness, constantly being outclassed by those around him. The fact that you never really notice how much the film rushed the courtship of Edith and Thomas is a testament to the chaste chemistry the two actors possess. Their love is one of gentle companionship in contrast to what comes later.
When Edith, who is already haunted by the ghosts of family tragedy, loses her father to murder she runs away with Thomas to Allerdale Hall, his estate where the house is falling both in disrepair and being swallowed by the disused clay mines beneath it. Del Toro's set design is always a thing of art and Allerdale Hall is his masterpiece, a traditional English manor that manages to be both vast and claustrophobic. A creature alive, but visibly dying, with constantly-moving parts seen only at the fringes of it's broken husk. Each room and level is so distinct in its design that they feel like characters unto themselves. From the dank, industrial clay vats in the basement to the narrow, spiked hallways and the rotten, winding stairwell.
Allerdale is also residence to Thomas's sister Lucille, a detached creature fixated only on her brother and the grim realities of her life. Jessica Chastain has had a great run this year playing the down-to-earth rationalist among larger, more colourful characters. In Lucille though she gets to really let loose as a creature holding all her madness deep inside her. Like Annie Wilkes she is an unstable character made all the more chilling by how composed and calm she seems on the outside. When she finally does let loose it is to glorious effect, a sharp, terrifying performance that proves her more monstrous than any ghost or ghoul.
That's another thing about the film which has recurred throughout Del Toro's work and not always to positive effect. Del Toro has always been enamored of the supernatural and his films always find the true horror in everyday humans. The unfortunate result is that the more ghostly sequences, heavily featured in Crimson Peak's marketing, never really achieve the tense level of horror associated with films like The Haunting or Psycho. There are jump scares aplenty but they feel cheap and lacking in a more lingering impact. It's not so much the design of the ghosts, which admittedly are shown so explicitly that the horror soon wears thin. It's more to do with the build up of their arrival and how quickly they tranform, in true Del Toro style, from a spectre of torment to a benevolent ally.
There are other problems to be sure. It may be baggage from his Sons of Anarchy days but Charlie Hunnam really doesn't convince as a man of the 19th Century. Too much time is spent teasing him as Edith's rightful companion in what is supposed to be a feminist revision of that kind of trope. The violence is elaborate and cartoonish, which suits the film right up until the end when Edith herself is gravely injured. It may seem like a nitpick but to be able to slam her ribs into a balcony and walk away with only a sprain feels like a stretch.
Perhaps it's part of Peak's charm that it seems so vastly divorced from reality, like Del Toro's previous work Pacific Rim, it feels like a cartoon made with real actors. To the great directors credit this never lessens the experience, the sincerity one feels in the courtship of Edith and Thomas, her terror at the ghosts of Allerdale and the shock at discovering the dark secrets of Allerdale Hall resonate powerfully. The film draws from the conventions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but unlike it's predecessors has no time for happy resolutions. Edith won't leave Allerdale with the true man of her dreams and certainly not without the scars to prove she was there. If anything Crimson Peak is the Gothic romance you'll wish you read in school.
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