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Jessica Chastain is far creepier in Crimson Peak than here
BGuillermo del Toro‘s Crimson Peak is one of the best 100-minute Gothic horror films in recent memory, easily reminiscent of the 1940’s Alfred Hitchcock. Unfortunately, the movie lasts two full hours, and, in those last 20 minutes, director del Toro manages to undo a good bit of the mood he’s created and replace it with ineffective CGI ghosts and campy histrionics.
Crimson Peak begins in the most unlikely of venues, turn-of-the-century Buffalo, NY, where aspiring writer Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) falls for British visitor Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). She marries Sharpe and returns with him and his sister Edith (Jessica Chastain) to his ancestral home, Crimson Peak, so named because it sits on top of red clay mines Sharpe is trying to modernize to save the family’s finances. But Edith soon discovers that the decaying mansion is home to lots of secrets, both natural and supernatural.
Crimson Peak is a ghostly horror story in which the ghosts are the least scary and most distracting part of the movie. Simply put, the mansion has tons of them, and when they show themselves, they resemble nothing more than leftover extras from The Walking Dead. Before that however, del Toro has crafted a masterful suspense tale with his three lead actors in an isolated wintry setting with plenty of sinister goings on. It’s not giving too much away to reveal that Thomas married Edith more for her family money than anything else, and that he and Lucille may not have her best interests at heart. Jessica Chastain delivers a deliciously wicked performance here as the sister who does not wish Edith well. And, by making Edith more of a feminist than the wallflower the Sharpes had originally envisioned, del Toro alters the dynamic of the eventual duel of wits among them considerably. The director has also created a perfect setting for the film, a magnificently rendered, gigantic decaying monstrosity of a mansion (the roof has holes in it so snow falls indoors). But then, in what’s apparently a woefully misguided attempt to appeal to more jaded, modern horror fans, del Toro dissipates all the erotic tension and suspense he’s created in favor of buckets of CGI ectoplasm and blood. Crimson Peak is too good of a cinematic experience to be completely ruined by its ridiculous ghostly manifestations, but these ghosts were definitely better left unseen.
In this scene, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain argue about their plans. Our full review of Crimson Peak is now available on Silver Screen Cinema.
Photo credit: “Jessica Chastain” by Gordon Correll / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
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