Any film made by Guillermo del Toro has a visual style that makes it recognizable at a glance, whether it’s a sequence or a ‘still’ photo taken from the film. ‘Crimson Peak ‘ made in 2015 is an excellent example, being perhaps the most ‘del Toro’ of del Toro‘s films. From the point of view of fantasy and visual imagination, the film is excellently designed, which makes it far exceed the average level of vintage horror films. In del Toro‘s filmography, however, this film is not one of his top films. The reason may be that by placing the story in the genre of movies in which ghosts and their relationships with humans play a key role in the action, the director (also a co-author of the script) seems to have borrowed and made the most of all the set effects, but works too little to the supernatural element. Those who see the film will find that the ghosts show up in copious quantities and in impressive appearances, but do not play an important role in the action. To paraphrase a dialogue in the film, it is a story with ghosts, but not a ghost story.
The story begins in the New England of the first years of the 20th century where young heiress and socialite Lucille Sharp (Mia Wasikowska) falls in love with a young Brit inventor Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) which his father believes to be the wrong man for her. When his father dies a violent death nothing can prevent any longer Lucille to Marry Thomas and move with him and his piano playing sister (Jessica Chastain) to England. Their location is a remote mansion which seems to have witnessed plenty of atrocities that may not be over actually, a fact that the which the ghost-communicating American young woman (did I mention that she has the talent to speak with ghosts?) will face soon. Soon we will be together with the heroes in the middle of a Gothic horror movie.
I have already written about the visual qualities of the film. Guillermo del Toro invented a cinematic world in his films in which people coexist with ghost, spirits and strabfe life forms, in which water and retro technologies play a significant role, in which red is a counterpoint to white, and black and shadows have thousands of different shades. The director directs his actors with professionalism and controls them with precision, completely erasing almost any trace of their personality, melting them into masterfully designed costumes and the extreme feelings of the heroes. We were in a gloomy and violent fairy tale, with a somewhat predictable outcome. With an extra touch of inventiveness and creativity, ‘Crimson Peak ‘ could have been a memorable film.