Film Review - Crimson Peak

Film Review - Crimson Peak

Guillermo Del Toro is a talented director with a fine CV under his belt. Aside from a few forays into Hollywood blockbuster-dom, he's a fully-fledged auteur: key concerns, a visual style all of his own and everything else you'd expect from the word. I'm going to avoid talking about Pacific Rim as much as possible in this review, as it frankly doesn't support most of what I'm going to say...

I'll get it out of the way now: I thought Pacific Rim was unintentionally hilarious and a really bad film. An admirable attempt at something quite new, spoiled by some baffling set pieces, silly plotting and truly abysmal acting (the continued popularity of Charlie Hunnam continues to baffle me). As his most recent film, I wasn't exactly full of confidence going into Crimson Peak. But how wrong I was to allow my faith in an artist to be shaken.

Crimson Peak is a fine slice of Gothic horror, almost Hammer-like in its atmosphere, shocks and cleavage (in terms of both boobs and knives). Likeable protagonist Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska. Brilliant as ever, even if the character name is a bit obvious) finds herself embroiled firstly with the unsettling ghost of her dead mother (effective, kind of dementor-like) and the mysterious Baronet Thomas Sharpe (y'know, like a knife) for whom she falls as quickly as women do in this type of film. Tom Hiddleston (Sharpe) looks unassailably cool in Victorian costume and does well with a part which in the wrong hands could have been shrinking violet or scenery-chewing panto villain. His delivery (along with his jaw line) is somewhere between serpentine and gentlemanly and keeps you guessing despite some telegraphed plot points. Completing the love triangle on which the film stands, is Jessica Chastain's Lucille Sharpe, symbiotic sister to Thomas. Again, in lesser hands she would be drenched in cliché but lucky for us Chastain is one of the finest actresses on the planet and elevates a potentially thankless character into something truly scary. It's worth pointing out that this is a much better, more atmospheric and scarier horror than her last foray into the genre, Mama (Andres Muschietti, 2013).

The film is going well, and veers effectively between creepy and downright unpleasant, for the entire first act. Then we arrive at Allerdale Hall, the Sharpes' dilapidated family mansion, for the second act onwards. The hall is pure Del Toro and a masterpiece of set and production design. Built over and gradually sinking into a clay mine, Allerdale has fallen into disrepair and you can sense the demonic glee Del Toro takes in torturing you with every noise, locked door and darkened corridor. Much like the tree in Pan's Labyrinth, this is location as character and works brilliantly. The clay mine motif is a brilliant one, allowing Del Toro to justify Allerdale's walls oozing with red goo and the snow turning, well, crimson. It's the House of Usher, cracked but bleeding rather than falling; the house is the Sharpe family.

Del Toro turns the expected horror screws throughout, filling his shots with ominous images: the creepy photographs and wax recordings; the marble walls of a bathhouse look like they're splattered with blood; the wooden embellishments of Allerdale's doorways look like spearheads. All of that Victorian machinery has something deliciously torturous about it, too. The film is littered with foreboding in the corners of the frame. Del Toro is also quick to reference horror classics such as The Shining (a rotting body in a bathtub, a bouncy ball returned along an empty corridor) and Rosemary's Baby (what exactly is in the tea they're feeding her) and the aforementioned nods to Poe. Far from being a pastiche or an ironic tribute to horrors past, this is resolutely Del Toro's own film. Key motifs of his such a child (or an innocent) in peril, a family unit featuring a monster, and an unhealthy obsession with insects are prevalent throughout.

It's far from perfect, though. Simply referencing your knowledge of horror without using it to drive a plot or create suspense can make its own problems. For example, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who didn't work out what the evil plot was from some distance off. Likewise the Sharpe family 'dynamic'. The film skirts dangerously close to camp at times, with some overwrought moments. While Charlie Hunnam is less awful than usual in this – his appalling mid-Atlantic accent kind of suits the proto-American period – he is still a terrible actor, and his sub-plot feels tacked on (often with a long knife).

So often is the case with horror, a film will treat you to 80 minutes of enjoyable foreplay and then offer a disappointing climax, normally by showing you some duff CGI which lessens the effect of all the good work before it. Pleasingly, this boils down to a quite brutal throwdown between two beautiful women (the sight of Chastain in clingy Victorian undergarments is worth the price of admission alone... sorry). Lots of blood is spilled and no concessions are made for younger viewers. Exactly what horror should be: horrible.

So it's kudos to Del Toro for getting his mojo back after a disappointing foray into robots and giant monsters. This time he keeps his monsters human-sized and suitably monstrous. Leaving the cinema, I can't help but wonder how good his version of The Hobbit would have been if he hadn't walked. Del Toro would have made you really believe that Gollum would eat Bilbo during 'Riddles In The Dark'. If instead of that, we get more personal and passionate films like Crimson Peak, then I'm happy with the trade.