Crimson Peak review

Title: Crimson Peak
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Cast: Mia Wasikowska
         Tom Hiddlestone
         Jessica Chastain
         Charlie Hunnam
Run time: 119 minutes
Certificate: 15

Do you guys get the impression that I like horror films... yeah me too. This is director Guillermo Del Toro's latest feature film (after Pacific Rim, so a bit of a change in terms of genre, leaving the giant robots and replacing them with giant houses). Crimson Peak tells the story of Edith Cushing, a young writer who just wants to be taken seriously by publishers and those around her... Eventually, she meets and falls in love with charming aristocrat and failing inventor, Thomas Sharpe (played by Tom Hiddlestone). Pretty clear as to what happens from there on, they fall in love, get married and he whisks her off to Allerdale Hall in England, where it becomes apparent that not all is as it seems.... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA (that was my evil laugh, scary no? ok then you're tougher than I am).

Firstly let me just get one thing straight. This really isn't a horror film. Yes, there are ghosts and quite a few of them at that; but above everything else, this is a traditional Victorian gothic romance. A love triangle of supernatural proportions if you will. Just imagine Withering Heights, but some of the characters were already dead. That said, when this film goes into horror, it sure as hell is quite creepy. Del Toro doesn't give us normal ghosts, these aren't misty spectres or people running around in bed sheets, no, instead we are presented with mangled up corpses which are made of a crimson red substance (get the reference!), but are just as terrifying. There are a couple of jump scares, but nothing cheap or fake like a cat running in out of nowhere or anything of tat calibre.

Visually, this has got to be one of Del Toro's finest films, giving the audience a feast for the eyes as everything is presented on such a grand scale with massive sets. The most impressive of which is Allerdale hall, a behemoth of a building that looks like something taken straight out of a Grimm fairytale. With hundreds of rooms, and walls that seep red clay from the mines below, the house genuinely feels like an extra character in the film, a living breathing entity containing these characters.

Away from the sets, the vibrancy of the effects are magnificent, especially in the films incredible and brilliantly suspenseful final act, as a mixture of blood and clay find their way into a snowy landscape. The colours create for a striking and particularly beautiful contrast. Speaking of blood lets move on to one of the most important tropes of ghosts and horror, death, and through that, violence.

The violence in this film, though rare and spread out throughout the film, so not just to show in the last act, is both shocking and incredibly gruesome. From peoples heads being smashed in Drive style, to someone being stabbed directly in the middle of the face, the film doesn't let up on the violence or gore. Although, not to sound creepy or partially sadistic, but the film wouldn't be as entertaining as it is if the violence wasn't as vibrant or shocking as is shown. To be honest, the violence is shocking, but for anyone who had either seen Pan's Labyrinth, Blade 2 or The Strain, it shouldn't come as that much of a shock.

All in all the film is frightening, at times sweet and sentimental and always absolutely beautiful to look at. A striking feature not like any other North American film that Del Toro has previously made. To quote Mark Kermode from his Friday film review show with Simon Mayo this is Del Toro's first "English speaking Spanish film".