Crimson Peak (2015)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds… and remembers.
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What critics say influenced Crimson Peak
Nineteenth-century Gothic has rarely looked so sumptuous as it does in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lusciously atmospheric period homage to such classics as “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca” that also manages to integrate reminiscences of “Gaslight,” “Notorious,” “The Shining” and even “Dragonwyck” into the mix.
She may be channeling Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca, but she’s no less effective for that, and she is harrowing in a scene when Lucille does nothing more than talk about her mother while feeding porridge to an ill Edith.
It plays as a miscalculation on del Toro’s part, like he’s nodding a little too vigorously at Mrs. Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca — a stated influence — though Chastain is able to shine in a few moments of quiet, emotional introspection.
It reminded me of silvery black and white classics like House on Haunted Hill , Gaslight , Rebecca , Dragonwyck , Wuthering Heights , et al – except of course that Crimson Peak lives up to its title and is awash with glorious, saturated color.
Though it draws inspiration from Rebecca, Notorious, and Jane Eyre, the sensibility is pure Del Toro.
You just know something ghastly is lurking under her unruffled demeanor — she reminds me of the Mrs. Danvers character in “Rebecca.”
Nineteenth-century Gothic has rarely looked so sumptuous as it does in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lusciously atmospheric period homage to such classics as “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca” that also manages to integrate reminiscences of “Gaslight,” “Notorious,” “The Shining” and even “Dragonwyck” into the mix.
There are nods at haunted house benchmarks The Haunting and The Innocents, as well as a bathtub scene with obvious reference to Kubrick’s The Shining.
Edith encounters several, among them a hideous corpse figure in the upstairs bathtub who’s an obvious nod to “The Shining” (one of perhaps three dozen literary or film references one could pick out).
For a motion picture where decaying, moaning spirits come knockingone set-piece involving a bathtub is highly reminiscent of a similar scene in 1980's " The Shining "it is the human conflict that intrigues the most, demanding one to continue turning each new lush, sinister cinematic page.
The father returns as a bloody beast with his skull caved in, and the heroine's mother keeps bursting into the room as a charcoal-blackened wraith, but the real wonder is the sumptuous production design by Thomas E. Sanders, whose darkly colorful sets were inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
But the story feels more like a pastiche of fondly remembered elements than an original concept -- a little of "The Haunting" here, a splash of "The Shining" (still the best haunted-house movie ever made) there.
The balance of flamboyant visuals and restrained camera movement is very reminiscent of those old Hammer movies, but Crimson Peak also reminds me of Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age of Innocence, which is set during a similar time period and uses silent-film-style irises to focus our attention on a single part of the screen.
Bursting with references both literary and cinematic, this is del Toro’s “The Age of Innocence” by way of Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents,” as brazenly over-the-top as those films were subtle, manifesting a ghost story in which Wasikowska’s Edith Cushing has far more to fear from the living than from the dead, and the female of the species is deadlier than the male.
Edith and Thomas’s ballroom waltz scene, for instance, can’t hold a candle to the repressed eroticism in Anna Karenina or The Age of Innocence .
Indeed, there are distinct echoes of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” here, but del Toro only takes what he needs to tell his own story.
"Crimson Peak" is reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Notorious" in more ways than one (although "Rebecca" is also a clear influence).
If Crimson Peak has a patron saint, it’s Alfred Hitchcock, with Rebecca, Notorious and Suspicion supplying the oxygen from which the story draws life.
With Crimson Peak, he soullessly "borrows" the central relational moments from Notorious: the poisoned tea, the looming chairs, the threatening relative, an extended gag with a key from a key chain that goes missing only to reappear at the most inopportune moment.
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Instead, he’s billed it as a “Gothic romance” in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca or George Cukor’s Gaslight.
It’s been 10 years since del Toro’s been allowed to wade in the rated-R deep end (as he did in Pan’s Labyrinth ), and I must say, Crimson Peak has its moments of shocking and cringe-inducing violence – but they’re in furious bursts; thankfully, there’s no Saw or Hostel inspired torture porn here.
After two fanboy feasts (Hellboy II and Pacific Rim), Guillermo del Toro returns to the arty, gothic vibe of his beloved Pan's Labyrinth (2006), and while this isn't as haunting, it's definitely more haunted.
There are things to like about Crimson Peak but, although the level of technical accomplishment matches that of Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth , this is neither as imaginative nor as satisfying a journey into the realms of the strange and supernatural as some of the director’s more memorable outings.
Many of the influences that del Toro and co-writer Matthew Robbins have channeled into this passion project – which has been gestating ever since the release of “Pan’s Labyrinth” in 2006 – partake of both elements, to be sure: The Hammer horror films of the ‘60s (geek alert: Edith’s last name is Cushing!) or Lovecraft’s ludicrous tales of gelatinous entities from beyond time.
In its best moments, it’s a visually sumptuous fantasy reminiscent of the director’s jewel, “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Despite what the trailer may have hinted at – "Del Toro's latest masterpiece" – this is not the spiritual successor to Pan's Labyrinth, no folklore to unfurl or great mystery to unravel.
Bursting with references both literary and cinematic, this is del Toro’s “The Age of Innocence” by way of Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents,” as brazenly over-the-top as those films were subtle, manifesting a ghost story in which Wasikowska’s Edith Cushing has far more to fear from the living than from the dead, and the female of the species is deadlier than the male.
Imbued with the aesthetic and tonal spirit of bombastic, luxuriantly-coloured, oft-melodramatic Euro-horrors of the 1960s (think the films of Mario Bava or Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations), Crimson Peak also has a dash of The Innocents (and thus The Turn of the Screw ) and specific Hitchcocks ( Rebecca and Psycho ) in its lush blood, as well as a bit of Brontë – a good chunk of the story could be interpreted as Jane Eyre with more literal ghosts.
Costume designer Kate Hawley ( Edge of Tomorrow , Pacific Rim , the forthcoming Suicide Squad ) exaggerates puffed 1890s-style leg o’mutton sleeves to make Edith resemble a butterfly – a motif echoed in production designer Tom Sanders’ ( Bram Stoker’s Dracula , Braveheart , Red Riding Hood ) ornate interiors.
Still, less setup and a lot more exploring would have done wonders, as the mansion is by far the film’s main attraction — the brainchild of del Toro and production designer Tom Sanders, whose work on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” was an ideal warm-up for the gig.
As should be clear, the real star of the film is del Toro’s visual sensibility, which is fully realized in all its sumptuous glory by production designer Thomas E. Sanders (whose first project was Francis Ford Coppola’s similarly opulent love letter to the horror cinema’s past, 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen (Silent Hill, The Brotherhood of the Wolf).
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The film combines the gloomy aesthetics of “Wuthering Heights,” the apparitions, family secrets and betrayals of “The Woman in Black” with the murderous straight razor chills of “Sweeney Todd.”
Although the film may hold a certain appeal for those who have spent long hours thumbing through the pages of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, its deficiencies make it at best an atmospheric triumph with a weak narrative.
There's a little bit of The Innocents, of Andre de Toth's House of Wax, of John Fowles's (more than William Wyler's) The Collector, and a lot--a lot a lot a lot--of Lewis Allen's great The Uninvited (to which del Toro has already paid homage in a film he produced, Mama).