Not only did I love every silly, gothic, gorgeous minute of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, I’m actually suspicious of those who didn’t.
If you say, “It’s too derivative!”, I will reply, “That’s kind of the point.” And if you say, “It’s not scary enough!”, I will counter with, “Have you ever seen a gothic horror romance?” And if you say, “It’s too beautiful; it’s overly art directed!”, I will simply stare at you, agog, and say, “Are you insane?”
That said, if the idea of a swooningly sumptuous gothic horror romance with comely and talented leads that is scary (but not too scary) and positively oozes with mad affection for the genre is not for you, then by all means pass. I’ll just be here in the audience, having the time of my life.
Our heroine, as is often the case in such films, is a bookish and motherless heiress named Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska). She has little interest in the grand society balls that her doting father (Jim Beaver) tries to coax her to, preferring to stay tucked away in her room writing a horror novel. One day, an English baronet named Thomas Sharpe (a pale Tom Hiddleston, even more consumptively beautiful than usual) comes to town, seeking investors for his clay mining machine. He’s a dashing figure, although the observant Edith notes that his clothing, while expensive, is worn and shabby. Thomas immediately begins to woo Edith, much to the consternation of the kindly town doctor (Charlie Hunnam), who has a crush on her. Edith rejects Thomas’s advances at first, but soon she can’t help but to get swept away by the romance of it all. After a suspicious tragedy occurs, Edith has little left in her home town of Buffalo, NY to keep her. Not heeding the warning of a ghoulish apparition, she journeys with Thomas to England.
Of course Thomas’s house is not just a remote and decaying old mansion—it is the ne plus ultra of remote and decaying old mansions. For one thing, the house sits on top of a clay mine, so a blood-red clay oozes into all the cracks and crevices. It’s not just in a state of ill repair, it’s literally falling apart at the seams—giant pieces of the roof are missing; cascading snow drifts into the entranceway; and of course, multiple things that go bump in the night are brushed off as creaky old houses and their infernal noises. And then there is Thomas’s sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), a woman so brittle, so bitter, and so possessive of her younger brother, every forced smile makes her look pained and every polite offer to make Edith a cup of tea feels like an ominous threat.
Throughout it all, del Toro and his cast wink a little, but not too much. Crimson Peak is more glorious tribute than sendup, merely exaggerating the genre’s already campy elements—and adding a few grotesquely rococo touches, a del Toro specialty. So a picture of the Sharpe’s dead mother hanging from the wall is a little too severe, and all of that blood-red clay oozing everywhere is as comical as it is ravishing, and Jessica Chastain positively luxuriates in Lucille’s starchy evilness. There’s even a small, yappy dog that chases balls thrown by no one in particular (“I thought you took care of that thing,” Lucille hisses to Thomas.) Del Toro and his cast are clearly having the time of their lives. It’s wonderful to see a film made with this much joy and passion.