Crimson Peak (2/5 Stars)

If you had asked me what I thought about director Guillermo Del Toro before I had seen Crimson Peak I may have answered, “He’s like Tim Burton, but scary.” Both men have this undying affinity for the macabre and their movies are works of art to that end. But whereas Tim Burton has long ago forgotten what scared him about ghastly figures, Guilermo has made at least one great movie, “Pan’s Labyrinth” that tapped into true horror. I was hoping “Crimson Peak” would be more like the latter but unfortunately it is more like former. Whatever shock value the undead may have had in Guillermo's earlier movies has worn off and now he presents them like Burton does, all style and no suspense.

The movie stars Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) as a young aspiring novelist in the era of Victorian Gothic Romance. She is subject to sexism by chauvinist editors who do not like her romantic stories that have ghosts in them. This is not too big a plot point and is more of an excuse for the character to comport herself in an annoying way that suggests she has two centuries foreknowledge of being on the right side of history. 

Her budding feminism takes a back seat when she meets a dark handsome count (Tom Hiddleston) whom she feels she should dislike greatly. He is an Englishman from a declining family who is seeking investors for a clay pit dredger he has designed. They hit it off during a waltz at a ball and it seems like wedding bells until something odious is uncovered by a private investigator. Her father threatens the man to break off the engagement in a cruel and public way or he will reveal to his daughter this dark dishonest lie behind his betrothal promise. Take a moment and review that last sentence. If the secret were told to the daughter she would certainly not marry the man, thereby in all probability breaking off the engagement in a prudent and quiet manner. The father takes his course of action because he loves his daughter. Actually he obviously hates her but the movie does not seem to consider this. Compounding his daughter’s woes he is murdered the next day and she marries the count anyway because of course she has no idea why she should not marry him or even suspect foul play.

If I seem unduly vague about the deep dark secret it is because the movie is too. We are not told what the secret is until the last act of the movie. It should also be noted that Mia’s mother died when she was young and her ghost visits her at night and gives her cryptic warnings. She enters the room in the creepiest way possible and whispers “Beware of Crimons Peak!” This too is because she loves her daughter but really could this ghost be more unhelpful. Although it is not revealed what Crimson Peak refers to for a very long time, it could not be easier to figure out what is meant once Mia moves to England and stares at the Count’s estate for the first time. It is obviously haunted and in fact has been especially designed by Guillermo to to look haunted. This detail escapes our young lady.

There is a true disconnect here between production design and what would be considered honest human reactions. The fault lies all over but it begins with Guillermo Del Toro who has put quite a lot of work into making everything in the movie look extravagantly horrible from the mansion, to the costumes, to the macabre undead ghosts, but does not expect the characters to react to them as if they are seeing them. A good example is when our lady sees her first ghost in the mansion. It is a grosteque anatomically correct blood soaked man with half his flesh ripped off. It stalks toward her. She is frightened but not nearly frightened enough by all human standards. And once she leaves the room she is a little jazzed which is the same to to say that she is impossibly calm. Then there is the sister of our Count played by Jessica Chastain. Hers is an awful one-note performance of disdain and malevolence. She does not even pretend to put a conceit of civility while the Count is courting our young lady. This fazes our lady but not enough for us to believe that she is the intelligent woman the movie would have us believe she is. To say that Mia Wasikowska’s performance is wrong is to cover over the fact that the character itself is unbelievable and the story impossible. 

In conclusion, Guillermo has pour all of his efforts into the production design and treated his characters like afterthoughts. Many times a good production design will help performances by making the world the characters inhabit more believable. Here it does the opposite. Guillermo is certainly a great visual artist but that does not necessarily translate into good storytelling when it forces characters to react in weird and unnatural ways. Not all bad production design is cheap and devoid of love. 

I don’t really a critical thing to say about this but it does merit mentioning: Mia Wasikowska’s hair is both the best possible style (while up) and worst possible style (while down) in this movie.

Given that the ghosts are generally unexplained and our lady’s reactions to them are bewilderingly muted, I started wondering half way through if they were even dangerous. They were certainly not particularly scary at any point. There does happen to be an unflinching exposition of gore at the end of Crimson Peak. I don't have a problem with gore as far as to say that it needs to be earned. The audience should be engaged in the story to a point that when our lady cracks Chastain's head in with a shovel, the reaction is not accompanied by bad laughs and groans. This is a bad movie. Guillermo needs to find something that scares him next time. This is just so much fluff.