Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Mia Wasikowska’s character (Edith Cushing) in “Crimson Peak” is a novice writer. It is something I could watch with the sound off, but I’d rather not.
Crimson Peak, a “gothic romance” film, is about an upper class girl and an aspiring horror novelist from New York, Edith Cushing (Mia), getting swept off her feet by Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddlestone), an aspiring clay mining entrepreneur from England.
Storytelling takes a pronounced backseat to screen atmospherics here, as can often be the case with director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim). He was replaced by Tom Hiddleston. Here is everything you need to know about Crimson Peak.
“Thomas Sharpe is dashing and mysterious – I suppose you’re not quite sure about him”. When you go this blatantly meta, it is easy to set yourself up for failure. In a more mundane setting it might be a confusing bore, but del Toro’s haunted house is such a brilliant character itself that it becomes all-enveloping. The love story present doesn’t work because the movie neither has fun with it or is good enough to make you believe in it. With the love story quickly losing interest the rest of the film starts crumbling too. Here, it is mainly about the loss of innocence. Only a handsome British newcomer, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), strikes the right note, praising her talent as well as her beauty – or perhaps he’s just trying to convince her wealthy father, Carter (an excellent Jim Beaver), to invest in a weird mining scheme. She gives a magnificently chilling performance, able to unnerve simply with the tone of her voice, and she can turn the sound of a scraping spoon into something far more frightening than a scream.
Crimson Peak has a lot of influences from Gothic romanticism to Sherlock Holmes style mysteries to the melodramatic Victorian dramas of early Hollywood to camp horror. While that’s technically considered a subcategory of horror, it’s an entirely different beast – much more “Jane Eyre“, “Rebecca” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein” than “Nightmare on Elm Street” or even “The House on Haunted Hill“.
The house used in the film was built in its entirety for the shoot. Chastain and Wasikowska square off in a climatic showdown that will surely earn them a Best Fight nomination at the MTV Movie Awards.
If only del Toro had worked as hard on his script as he did his set design. What is the crimson peak? Sharpe easily displaces the comparatively ordinary Dr. McMichael. But it is Jessica Chastain, who is the real scene stealer here.
