Run Of The Mill?…

When you look across the board of the Gothic-ghoul films that have come and either flopped or graced the silver screen in the past 10 years or so, I don’t think any can discredit the work that Guillermo Del Toro has done. While he hasn’t shied away from the spotlight with big-budget hits such as Pacific Rim and the Hellboy films, Del Toro’s best works, for a lot of people, have always been the works that fit into that Horror centric ilk like Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone andPan’s Labyrinth; filmic pieces that have all adopted an archaic but visual appeal that goes into great depth and detail and constructs their own world in an imaginative way. Indeed, Del Toro’s latest offering in Crimson Peak does offer that pristine quality when it comes to the production design and the visual imagery, but you can’t help but question the narrative structure at times since it does tend to fragment itself with unnecessary cuts and takes it’s time in developing the romance in the film and the eventual arrival of the scary location that is Crimson Peak…

Set in the turn of the last century, Crimson Peak’s ghoulish fable revolves around an American heiress Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who aspires to be an author who prefers penning ghost stories to writing the romance novels that her editor wants. Though her father, Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver) a wealthy businessman, wishes Edith to marry her childhood friend in Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), Edith finds herself falling for the British Baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who along with his sister Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), is seeking funding for his clay mining invention. Through many circumstances which won’t be spoiled to you, the reader, Edith and Thomas eventually marry and return to England and arrive at Allerdale Hall, The Sharpes’ decaying and old mansion. While Edith at first is enjoying her new life at Allerdale Hall, she soon realises that looks can be deceiving and that Allerdale Hall is in fact the place her gruesome ghostly mother warned her about…”Beware of Crimson Peak”… 

While I will go on to credit Crimson Peak for it’s overall visualisation with it’s production design and it’s attention to detail when it comes to the characterisation and ghosts/monsters which Del Toro has always conjured up in a consistent manner, one of the problems that has to be informed to you the reader, is the fact that the way the narrative is structured, is certainly questionable. Even though one of the main aspects to take away from Crimson Peak is the romantic element which is important to stress, Del Toro, who scripted this film with veteran writer Matthew Robbins, takes his time letting Edith and Thomas fall in love with each other, but because the film-maker is no specialist when it comes to affairs of the heart, the romance for large portions of the first of the film is largely stilted and easily predictable as to how that romance blooms. This specific critique, is something that Del Toro has been doing as of late; making really beautifully set films that in the end, have virtually no substance. When we eventually get to the beautifully detailed yet archaic looking mansion that the Sharpe brother and sister have taken ownership since they were little, this is when the story truly starts to unfold with the ghouls and crimson shaped evil spirits appearing. Even still, I can’t help but mention the non-necessities that Crimson Peak picks up once we’re finally in the devilish looking mansion. The first vexatious trait once we’re in Crimson Peak is the multiple sequences in which we see our heroine waking up in the middle of the night, hearing a noise in the hallway, slowly walking through the house while holding a candle while some crimson phantom pops out at her. These types of scenes occur consecutively, roughly around 4 times, and you get to the point where you’re wondering, ‘is this film really going anywhere?’ besides her just creeping through the hallways and hearing abnormal stuff at night. Really, if you had to compare these sorts of scenes from another film that executes this scene on a consistent basis, you can’t go no further than Amnebar’s The Others which funnily enough has the same kind of story context to Crimson Peak; both are set in a bleak and cursed house that have spirits lurking around every moment to scare both us and the characters. The other annoyance I have once we’re already introduced to the house, is how again on occasion, it sometimes cuts away from Allerdale Hall and cuts to Dr. McMichael in New York, which is the location the film begins it’s journey. While you could argue the scenes of Dr. McMichael investigating the character of Thomas Sharpe is crucial in the story-telling department, those specific scenes really serve to be unnecessary in the end. Not to spoil too much of the plot-line, but in the end the heroine figures out everything that is shrouded in mystery and you really do question the role of Dr. McMichael other than the fact that he’s a suggested love role that doesn’t ever get flourished. With this all in hand, the real problem that Crimson Peak has in terms of it’s story-telling is that it never really knows what it wants to be. Stories like Crimson Peak need some kind of tension or unresolved conflict and while you do get your good fair of ghosts, gore and blood, the film ultimately has no scares due to lack of any tension whatsoever which is disappointing to say. The other half with the romance and the relationship between Edith and Thomas is hard to grasp as believable at points. Wasikowska isn’t just clueless as Edith; she never really expresses any actual desire for anything in particular. With Hiddleston’s character of Thomas who all though is the most interesting character/performance of the film, his supposed ‘seduction’ which is expressed in the script, only comes across as unsteady dialogue. I guess the silver-lining to the whole story of the film would be the final segments of Wasikowska’s character finding out the truth which vaguely resembles the final moments in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with it taking place in a snow storm and adding that tense-defining music in the background and it makes you question, why didn’t they have more moments like this one?

While the script/narrative of Crimson Peak is a certainty to be questioned, one thing that Del Toro can be pleased with which he’s always done in films like this on a consistent basis, is creating and constructed a film world with it’s intricate and detailed production design and beautiful visuals that you would expect to see in a film like Crimson Peak. It would be a crime to not mention then how I think that I speak for everyone whose watched Del Toro’s past works when I say that Del Toro has always had an artistic eye when it comes to developing and creating surreal yet oddly disturbing monsters and ghosts. The obvious and best example to show this would be the monster who uses hands for eyes in Pan’s Labyrinth, but you can’t really take anything away from Crimson Peaks design. Especially the variety in the environments as it cleverly contradicts itself with first having a traditional early 20th century looking New York and then switches it’s local with a cold and bitter England that is set in this house that has garish red clay seeping down the crumbled wooden walls and pleasing on the eye. I perhaps should have mentioned this in when I was talking about the narrative structure, but one thing that I’ve liked about Del Toro whenever he goes about making a Gothic-fictional work is this kind of Alice in Wonderland idiosyncrasy that he employs in his films; where the main lead is leading a somewhat ordinary life yet manages to get tangled into another world where dark and surreal things to shape. Commenting on the monsters in Crimson Peak, in a weird yet right way, they reminded me a lot of Francis Bacon’s portraiture’s and how the faces are con-jointed and out of place. Even the dresses and costumes that each character wears bears symbolism and meaning to each specific character. While Edith occasionally wears angelic and graceful coloured clothes marking her to be this canary stuck in this jet black house, you also have Thomas in black-worn-out attire that resembles his age and ever-shrouded mystery.

The last construct of the film that I’ll be talking about that has me topsy-turvy over is the characterisation and how the dialogue at times feels slightly off. One of the biggest problems I feel Crimson Peak has which for many other Gothic-Horrors get right, is that Edith, our main heroine, has basically no arc and is really deemed one-dimensional. She starts in one place being a inspired fictional ghost writer who falls in love with the Thomas the Baronet and by the end of the film, she is basically in the same sort of state if not worse and really doesn’t learn much of anything and to be quite frank, there really isn’t anything interesting about her character other than the fact that she has this unworldly connection to ghosts as seen at the start of the film with her mother warning her about Crimson Peak. What’s worse is her characters ‘relationship’ with Hiddleston’s character of Thomas Sharpe. Wasikowska and Hiddleston have no chemistry between themselves and that again is disappointing considering that a major factor of this film is this dark romance which is a necessity to add to the weight of the plot. The dialogue between the two lovers simply was just weak and odd and again, didn’t sound interesting or plausible. For instance, there’s a scene in which Edith has again, just seen ghosts walking through the halls and she is terrified and crying her eyes out and the character of Thomas simply replies “don’t worry, tomorrow, we’ll go to the post-office” and honestly, it was probably the most random line of dialogue I have heard in a while in any film. It simply didn’t make sense according to what just happened in the film. However, if I did have to pick out a performance from the film it would be the singular performance of Hiddleston when he’s either alone or when he’s with Jessica Chastain’s character. He’s by far the most interesting character in terms of the background depth that he has related to the main story-line and Hiddleston, rightly so, typically knows how to play a incognito; a character that doesn’t give away too much, very much similar to that of Loki from the Marvel films.

To summarise what’s been said then, overall I was a bit disappointed with Crimson Peak due to it’s questionable story-telling which although is leading to something that is supposed to be great, bogs down on itself with poor scripting and characterisation of the leading romantic roles and does have it’s fair share of unnecessary scenes. As well to remind everyone, the final segments of the film, are genuinely fantastic in terms of how much tension and gore it has to offer and with that you really have to think to yourself, why wasn’t the entirety of the film like this from the get-go? The silver-lining of Crimson Peak does quintessentially have to be the overall motif of the film with it’s archaic designs of the monsters and the ever-grand magnificence of the house they go to and the clothing which again, adds to that detail and symbolises the characters rather well. If I had to recommend watching a Del Toro film that both offers spectacle in the design and the story, go and watch Pan’s Labyrinth. 

Right, and on that note it’s time to end. As always everyone, thank you for reading and enjoying my latest film review. If you liked what you have read of this review and have an opinion on this latest release, then you’re more then welcome to comment down below. Just to let you know, next week will be a sort of special Blog Post as I’ll be going through my favourite Halloween films to watch so be sure to check that out for next week. Anywho, thank you once again for the joining me in reviewing Crimson Peak. As always, I’ll see you all next week with another Blog Post. Until then, Take Care!! 🙂

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ – Alex Rabbitte