OCTOBER 20, 2015
In Mexican cinema circles, they are known as “The Three Amigos.” Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro came up together in the Mexican film industry, and each, following his own path, has had spectacular success in the United States. Cuaron won the Best Director Oscar in 2014 for “Gravity,” and Iñárritu won the same honor in 2015 for “Birdman.” Del Toro is no slouch in the Oscar department, either, as his 2006 Spanish-language “Pan’s Labyrinth” scooped up three Oscars, a rarity for a foreign film. Of the three, however, del Toro is the one who has forged the most iconoclastic path to success.
Del Toro is a fabulist who loves to create his own worlds out of nothing as well as the hideous spindly-fingered creatures inside them. His Southern California office is called “Bleak House” and is filled with horror artifacts he has collected since his early years as a geeky fan of the magazine “Famous Monsters of Filmland,” edited by Forrest J. Ackerman. (Full disclosure: I was the same geeky fan of “Famous Monsters” as a kid so I totally get del Toro’s aesthetic.) His is the Gothic world of the 1950’s horror films produced by Hammer studios and the Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe films of the 1960s. And he has lavishly recreated that world in “Crimson Peak.”
Set at the turn of the 20th Century, “Crimson Peak” opens in Buffalo, NY where frustrated ghost-story writer Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) meets Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an English baronet who seeks funding for a clay mining invention from Edith’s industrialist father Carter (Jim Beaver of FX’s “Justified”). When Carter sees Sir Thomas making advances on his daughter, he hires a private detective who unearths a treasure trove of dirt on the baronet and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).
To this point, “Crimson Peak” resembles a film made by Merchant/Ivory if they made a spooky ghost story. Edith is revisited by the ghost of her mother (spindly fingers again!) who warns her to “beware of Crimson Peak,” all of this amidst costumes, decorations and waltzes that are right out of “A Room With a View” and just gorgeous. Things soon turn dark, however, when, after bribing Sir Thomas & Lucille to get of his daughter’s life, Carter is found brutally murdered. Against the advice of her childhood friend Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam of “Sons of Anarchy”), Edith falls head over heels for Sir Thomas, who whisks her away to his decaying English mansion, Allerdale Hall.
Now we get into serious haunted house territory. And what a house del Toro has created! With rooms for days and doors that never seem to fully close to the elements outside, Allerdale Hall, known locally as Crimson Peak (uh-oh), is a living character in the film, and it is ruled with a mighty hand by Lucille.
A quick word about Jessica Chastain in this film. I bow to no man in my admiration for the gallery of strong heroines, from “Zero Dark Thirty” to “The Martian,” that Chastain has created. But it is so refreshing to see her let her hair down and play an out-and-out horrible character now and then. Her Lucille is so evil that when she sweeps into a room with her elaborate gowns, I half-expected any nearby horses to whinny. (“Blücher!”)
Del Toro creates a creepy enough atmosphere even without the imagined (?) spindly-fingered apparitions that seem to appear out of nowhere to terrify Edith. Add to that the fact that the house is built over a pool of bright red clay seeping through the floorboards and oozing down the walls, creating a sustained atmosphere of blood throughout the film. Plus just what is in that tea that Lucille insists on serving to Edith? And never ever go down into the basement!
Act 3 of “Crimson Peak” is just nuts. Suffice it to say that it involves meat cleavers and butcher knives, and that’s all you need to know.
Is all this too much? Of course it is, but it’s Guillermo del Toro! Yes, “Crimson Peak” is just a spooky ghost story and, in that sense, it’s a trifle. But such artistry has gone into the set design, sound design, music and costumes that you can’t help but admire a director who goes to such effort just to say “Boo!”
GRADE: B
