Famed horror Director Guillermo Del Toro’s latest ghost story takes us through a haunted mansion of ghosts and ghouls, in “Crimson Peak”. When her heart is stolen by intelligent businessman Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood red clay, and a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. Del Toro takes his audience on a high expectations psychological piece, and unfortunately for the audience, only some of those expectations are met. If i characterized “Crimson Peak” in one sentence, it would be that the film is loads of colorful style, with very little narrative substance. It’s artistic reach isn’t quite satisfied by it’s predictable grasp.

First of all, for those of you expecting a ghost film with lots of blood and gore, you may be slightly disappointed. The film’s rules are set for itself almost self-aware in the first scene of the movie, when Cushing is describing her novel that she has written, explaining that “It’s not a ghost story. The ghosts are just metaphors for the past”. This precedent reflects greatly on the haunting dead of the film, as the movie is mostly a love story struggle that happens to take place with ghosts, instead of vice versa. The audience doesn’t receive a lot of satisfying looks at the haunting visuals and almost animalistic movements. They are CGI in design, and that is a little disappointing, considering Del Toro is known for his prop work in the horror genre. However, there’s a lot of sadness to the spirits that haunt the house, and a lot less malice in their haunting. This instantly told me that they were being set up as second tier antagonists to the human side of the story. More on that later.

This is a very atmospheric film, and a lot of that rests on the color palate choices within the mansion itself. With no spare being expensed for the mansion itself, Del Toro lays a lot of his gamble in this film on the audience being swept up in the 16th century Victorian looking house. This place would’ve been the perfect shooting location for a 60’s Vincent Price film, so it’s no surprise that the movie’s tone is set perfectly inside of it’s doors. The lighting and shadow work of the interior shots will communicate effortlessly to the audience when terror lurks right around the corner. It’s a lot easier to take such a story in so many directions when the rooms and floors are literally limitless within this place, and it’s the perfect setting for such a story. The organ inspired musical score by Fernando Velazquez is the perfect 1-2 punch for really setting the mood, and getting the fear across for just how truly alone Cushing really is.

The performances are solid enough. Wasakowska is a really strong actress dramatically, but i think a horror film like this might have been just a little out of her comfort zone. I felt like we didn’t get a lot of strong reactions from her portrayal. A lot of the time, she feels very mute with the shocking events around her are being discovered. She didn’t do a terrible job, but I would’ve liked a little more emotionally during the film’s greatest scares. Hiddleston did a really good job as Sharpe. There’s a lot in his portrayal that leaves the audience guessing on his real intentions, and Hiddleston is quite remarkable at virtually playing two characters at the same time. But the real gem of the film is second time Del Toro collaborator Jessica Chastain. She plays the sister of the Sharpe household, and Jessica effortlessly leaves the audience desiring more scenes with this silent storm. During the first two acts, she is such an enigma. We know there is more to her character, but the movie stays pretty tight lipped about her past. That all changes in the final act of the movie, when we discover the true intentions of the siblings plans.

That last sentence isn’t a spoiler, as i feel like people have already had this film spoiled for them if they watched the very revealing trailers for the movie. My biggest problem plaguing this film isn’t in it’s delivery or it’s lack of scares. It’s in the fact that this movie had very little surprises. The audience around me sounded very bored when the big reveal is shown, and i think a lot of that is because the movie plays it off as one thing, when in reality we saw it coming from a mile away. I don’t understand how any of this could be such a shocking revelation, when i thought it was being used as trailer bait to pull the audience in to something bigger being shown on screen. But it never happens, and the movie kind of just ends on an anti-climatic note.

“Crimson Peak” isn’t a bad movie, but it’s one that i will have trouble ever sitting down to watch again. There’s not a lot of excitement or suspense building in the film, and the scares just kind of go off without any real planning or building for what lurks around the corner. The visuals are amazing, and the film’s story is more than faithful to the genre to serve as a solid double feature with “House on Haunted Hill” or “The Haunting”. But the problem with this film is that it’s going to lack a cult following because people will never feel inspired to watch it more than once, and that makes this film somewhat of a letdown. It’s underdeveloped, but a useful distraction visually to kill two hours during a boring day.

6/10