Marval Movie

Horror is a genre that needs to strike deep with its audience. It needs to be about real things that linger in the audience's mind after watching. There can be jump-scares but it's the ideas and concepts that it puts forward that need to grab you and then work their way under your skin. Crimson Peak delivers with a classic setup and visuals, only there's more effort and thought injected into all of its veins that you will be pumping it through your system for years to come.

We open with a girl named Edith (Mia Wasikowski) telling us that "Ghost's are real"  she met her first one after her mother died. It happened after the funeral, as she lays in-bed her mother came back to her to deliver only one message "Beware Crimson Peak." Cut to years later and she has become a very bright independent young woman that fancies herself an author, she tries to get her manuscript published (it's not really a ghost story, it's more of a story with a ghost character in it) but the publisher says it "needs a love story." As she re-writes her story a visiting businessman enters her life, the all-black-wearing, very English Thomas Sharpe, he needs financing for his estate that is dwindling, he is taken with Edith and love begins to bloom. But in the corners always glaring is Thomas sister Lucile (Jessica Chastain). The plot and many of the visuals are right out of any classic Gothic Horror/Romance, for the fans of Jane Eyre and Frankenstein they will feel right at home with the setting and the characters.

Mia Wasikowski as Edith is the right fit for this type of heroine, she is fragile having been kept in a gilded cage all her life but still is true to her convictions and beliefs. Tom Hiddleston seems to be channeling Basil Rathbone with his stature and old-school English delivery. Jessica Chastain has come a long way from her breakout role in The Tree of Life, now she is the personification of jealousy, resentment, and control, think of the evil step-mother, only a step-sister.

The imagery that Del Toro creates is some truly terrifying sight's to behold. He puts such care and thought into every aspect of his movies, things that would seem throw-away are given that much more effort from him and become so more enriching. Take for example a hand that grabs young Edith, it reaches out through pure darkness, the hand itself is also pure black, has long witch'like fingers and when they clasp around her shoulder the fingers start at the back of the hand and wrap around her. So much effort was put into the simple action of a hand grabbing our main characters shoulder to make it as creepy and as memorable as can be. Everything from the type of clothes the characters wear, from their mannerism to their beliefs is thought-through and displayed with either their dialog, costume and/or surroundings. It is what Del Toro has described as "Not eye candy but eye protein."

Next, we move to a new location and meet a new character all-in-one. Allerdale Hall, the Sharpe's mansion, is one of those movie locations that will take residence within your mind for the longest time. It is like the house in The Haunting or the castle in Beauty & The Beast or many other great striking movie locations. It is a high reaching building where the roof has been eroded away so the weather outside drifts in, the architecture was probably designed by a mad genius, the archways have spikes around them that make the hallways look like a long razor mouth and parts of it have come to life with moss and moths that have also made it home.

Locations can become characters in movies, even some instances where a soundtrack can become a character. But this is the first movie I've seen where I would say that a color has become a character, said color being red. It is so integral to the imagery and the story that you can't do without it. There are many other vivid colors for contrast and texture that create a lush palette on-screen, but it is the red that highlights and clues the audience to what is important.

Guillermo Del Toro delves deep into whatever movie he creates. He researches and refines the genre he works in. Hellboy was his Superhero, Pan's Labyrinth his fairy-tale and Pacific Rim was his monster movie. Crimson Peak is his ghost story, with as much thought, effort and intelligence put into it as the genre has ever had and maybe more than it deserves. But Del Toro puts it in any way, because it's for love.

Rating: 4 stars out of 4