Like the blood-red clay that lends the eponymous setting of “Crimson Peak” its name, the movie is a visually striking but sticky thing. Set in 19th-century England, in a decrepit but picturesque manor home, and starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain, the film by the stylish fantasist Guillermo del Toro looks marvelous, but has a vein of narrative muck at its core.
After a prologue set in Buffalo, where the dashing English baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston) has wooed and wed a wealthy young American, Edith (Wasikowska), the story quickly relocates – along with Thomas, Edith and Thomas’ creepy sister, Lucille (Chastain) – to the ancestral Cumberland home of the Sharpe family. Officially called Allerdale Hall, the rotting family mansion boasts a gaping hole in the ceiling, no heat, water that runs red from the tap, winds that howl through the halls with a hellish roar and an infestation of black moths. Oh, yes, it is also slowly sinking into the ooze that stains the snow-capped hills scarlet, leading locals to bestow its nickname.
In the age of the telegraph, “Crimson Peak” broadcasts its sinisterness early and often. If you haven’t figured out what’s going on well before Edith does, it’s no fault of del Toro’s.
And what is going on? It’s no secret that Thomas is after Edith’s money. The violent death of her father early in the film, coupled with Thomas’ desperate need to finance his clay-harvesting operation, removes any doubt about his ulterior motives. As for Lucille, what’s eating her is more mysterious, but only slightly. Her dark secret should become apparent about the time the film turns into a slasher flick.
You’d be forgiven if you thought this was going to become a ghost story, especially if you’ve seen the trailer. And to be sure, wispy, smoke-like apparitions do regularly rise through the floor and float through the halls, terrorizing Edith. (As a child, she was visited by the spirit of her dead mother, warning her to “beware Crimson Peak.” In her defense, Edith doesn’t discover the name until she gets there.) But who these spectres are and what they want remains unclear, at least for a little while.
Though del Toro is a master of macabre visuals, his screenplay (written with his “Mimic” collaborator Matthew Robbins) is filled with clichés, and frequently sets aside the supernatural story line – along with any attendant suspense – to focus on blunt tropes more familiar to fans of the violent-psychopath genre.
On the plus side, the prestige cast is a good one, and mostly fun to watch, even if Chastain could stand to dial down her Lady Macbeth-like performance. And the art direction (by Brandt Gordon) is impressive.
But “Crimson Peak” feels less like a Gothic romance or supernatural mystery, as it’s being touted by its marketers, than a costume version of “Scream,” dressed up in crinoline and top hats.
Maybe somewhere in the creative process the plan was to make a period ghost story. It’s not a bad idea, in an age in which restraint and subtlety are routinely left out of scary movies. But the old-fashioned good intentions of “Crimson Peak,” like the house at the center of the film, quickly get swallowed up by puddles of bright red goo. Rated R.
