I love Guillermo del Toro, especially his visual style and his fanboy adoration of movies & TV. I really wanted to see Crimson Peak in theaters, but I missed it because of a physical injury. Imagine my delight when the Brattle Theater announced that it would show Crimson Peak for one night only. Yes, please and thank you!
If you’re going to see Crimson Peak for ghosts, let me stop you now. Even a moderate del Toro fan knows that he doesn’t find ghosts innately scary, and Crimson Peak explicitly belabors the point that the ghosts are a metaphor in a story. Crimson Peak is not a ghost story, but a story with ghosts. Crimson Peak is more What Lies Beneath meets the Bronte sisters than Mama.
Crimson Peak may turn off viewers who deem it predictable. I watched the preview and pretty much guessed what was going to happen. Even the opening scene of Crimson Peak used a narrative framing device called “how we got here” that shows the end at the beginning and the rest of the movie shows how the character got to that that point. del Toro like Tarantino loves homages and exploring a genre in a post-modern pastiche over surprising the audience. Tarantino is all about dialogue and rhythm. del Toro is all about lush extreme imagery, layers of texture and decorative clutter and saturated colors. If predictability is going to irritate you, skip Crimson Peak.
Crimson Peak is set in the 19th century and is about Edith, the beloved daughter of a wealthy American laborer turned businessman who can see ghosts, but is terrified. She is more interested in writing than society. She meets Tom Hiddleston, who plays an English baronet named Thomas, who is title rich, but money poor, and like any heterosexual girl with eyes and ears, loses all common sense and falls in love with him. It doesn’t hurt that he compliments her writing. Don’t pay attention to his stern, forbidding and formidable sister, Lucille, played by the motherfucker who found Bin Laden, Jessica Chastain. Edith marries Tom and goes to his decaying ancestral estate and uncovers his monstrous secrets.
I loved Crimson Peak. First of all, no one told me that Bobby from Supernatural would be playing Edith’s father! It was so nice to see Jim Beaver on the big screen. I love him and love del Toro more for loving Bobby! Second, am I the only one tickled by the fact that Mia Wasikowska, an Australian actress was playing an America, and Chastain, an American actress was playing British aristocracy? Third, I love that del Toro frequently collaborates with the same actors even if they only appear in small scenes such as Jonathan Hyde who plays Eldritch Palmer and Leslie Hope who plays the lawyer in The Strain. Fourth, Crimson Peak is gorgeous, and I’m not sure if its beauty will translate to smaller screens. I just loved that the decadence and decay of the estate as a reflection of its’ residents souls.

SPOILERS

Seriously mom ghost, you are the worst warner ever. Your warning drove Edith to go on a date with Tom instead of staying home as she originally planned. I would have taken one look at that place and said, “I am too rich for this. Let’s go to a hotel & I’ll spend my money repairing this place if you feel that strongly about keeping it, honey!” I loved how the villains were still sympathetic as victims of abuse while simultaneously needing to die to stop the madness. Kudos to Tom for saying that in the sex scene, he needed to be more naked than the woman, and kudos to del Toro for listening to Tom. The pen is mightier than the sword, but a shovel works too. “I heard you the first time, beeyotch!” Jamie Lee Curtis would be proud. I loved that Dad Bobby just did not like Tom, but seriously after his untimely death, odd that the detective did not do more to ring the bell or that a doctor wouldn’t have more influence during the autopsy. Tom’s hard work was not only an effort to distinguish himself from his title and his sister, but a practical way to save his wife’s life- I’m financially successful so we don’t have to kill. I’m surprised that Lucille wasn’t more ticked that Tom couldn’t even kill a dog, but trusted him to kill the doctor. I loved the idea of hopeful and destructive sexuality instead of sex automatically equaling bad. Crimson Peak is far from perfect, but it gets more right than not and is a must see for fans of del Toro or any of the actors, particularly Tom.