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Rating: 3 out of 5
There are a few movies out there that revolve around haunted houses. You have the classic Poltergeist, or how about the Amityville Horror. If you want, you can say the Haunted Mansion from Disneyland, but if we are going to keep it strictly on the movie side, how about the Haunting or even the Others. There are plenty of horror movies that revolve around a house.
From the mind of director Guillermo del Toro comes another version of a haunted house. This time, del Toro welcomes his viewers to Crimson Peak. Set in the late 19th century in cold-ass Buffalo, New York, Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) is haunted by the death of her dear mother. Mom straight up comes back as a ghost and haunts Edith when she was young. An adult, Edith dreams of being a literary writer, but her very successful father, Carter Cushing (Beaver), thinks she can do something else. The Cushing’s world changes when Edith and her father meet English entrepreneur Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston). Thomas tries to get funding for an invention that extracts clay from the earth. He has been turned down by many, many, many other investors, and Carter is the latest to tell him no. Carter doesn’t trust anything about Thomas and his BEAUTIFUL sister, Lucille (Chastain). Edith becomes very smitten with Thomas, and a relationship develops. Carter, not liking what he sees, tries to buy off Thomas and to leave immediately. Thomas says yes, only for Carter to die at the hands of a mysterious figure. Thomas and Edith wed, and very quickly, they move into the Sharpe ancestral home in England, the run-down Allerdale Hall. After a few nights in the house, Edith’s nightmares return as she is visited by horrible apparitions trapped inside the house. Soon Edith learns the awful truth of Crimson Peak and must survive from all forces.
I didn’t have much expectations for this film, and it did surprise me a little bit but not a lot. As nice as the film looks, the story was overall blah. It felt like a combination between the film, The Others and the TV show, The House on Haunted Hill. Actually, now that I think about it, it felt like del Toro through in all the aspects of horror films he liked in terms of ghosts and haunted places, blended them together and added a twist in the story to make it somewhat worthwhile to watch. When watching the film, there were little to no scares or even a smidge of tension. The only tension that was in it was between Edith and Lucille. None of the ghost scenes truly made you jump or want to grab someone’s arm in fear. Honestly, that twist ending or revelation towards the end was straight up a headscratcher. That really didn’t need to be in the film, but I guess you have to make it somewhat crazy in a horror film. I will say this, I did like how the story revolved around a woman who wanted to be a writer and make it in the writing business. I didn’t like how people put her down but, in the end, rather than writing a love story, homegirl could write an epic ghost story. I like how one of her idols was Mary Shelley.
The positive aspects of the film are the visuals, style cinematography, and costume design. The style and vibe threw me off at first because I thought I was watching a Tim Burton film. It had that look of being gloomy with bright red colors. When you first see Crimson Peak, the shot that it is presented in is stunning. The house looks like a major run-down version of the Adams Family home in the middle of nowhere, and in the back is this large ass machine pumping out red clay that stands in all the scenes. The ghost has this freaky, haunting look and vibe to them as they appear. They have that Peter Jackson Lord of the Ring, Dead Men in the Mountains look. They are somewhat transparent but have that windy look to them. Each ghost tone and look is a little different in color, which makes them stand apart. Finally, the costume design is outstanding. If you are looking for a film with that late 19th-century feel, then this is it because their costumes are grand.
As far as the cast goes, the film had some well-known stars in it. The only problem is that their acting seemed to be all over the place. You had overdramatic scenes, under dramatic scenes, scenes that should’ve shown love but seemed to fail, and people were all over the place. The scenes between Hiddleston and Wasikowska seemed blah and uninteresting. I love me some Jessica Chastain, but she came off as menacing in a creepy bad way. Maybe it’s because her character was a little messed up in the head. I had almost no idea what Charlie Hunnam was doing. He seemed like a waste of a character in the whole movie. It just felt like the entire chemistry between the cast was off and that they just didn’t click together at any point in the film.
Overall, Crimson Peak is an okay horror film without and jumps or scares. It never really got off the ground in that aspect. The story is meh in terms of a horror film. Once again, it plays and gets inspiration from many other films. The acting could have been better. As for a positive, the visuals, style, cinematography, and costume design are really nice to look at. The film does a good job of setting up that gothic vibe to it. This film is nice to watch, but if you are looking for something on the level of Pan’s Labyrinth or even the Shape of Water, you might as well skip it.
