Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak is a haunted-house film that keeps forgetting it is one. The 2015 release runs 119 minutes, stars Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing, and carries the tagline “Love makes monsters of us all.” It is a gothic romance supernatural horror — that is how the source describes it. It is not, in the end, a fully met ambition.
Trailer, via Legendary.
Allerdale Hall Sinks Into Red Clay
The setting is the film’s best idea. Allerdale Hall, the Sharpes’ dilapidated Cumberland mansion, is sinking into the red clay mine beneath it. The clay leaches up through the winter snow, staining it bright red — the reason the estate is called Crimson Peak. That image does the work of a dozen jump scares. The house breathes, bleeds and remembers, and del Toro shoots it like a living thing.
Edith Cushing Sees Her Mother’s Ghost
The story opens in 1887 Buffalo, where Edith is visited by her mother’s ghost and a warning: “Beware of Crimson Peak.” By 1901 she is a budding author. She meets Sir Thomas Sharpe, played by Tom Hiddleston, and his sister Lucille, played by Jessica Chastain. Thomas wants investors for a digging machine to revive the family’s clay mines. Edith’s father, Carter Cushing, refuses him.
The Firethorn Berries and the Locked Trunk
Once Edith marries Thomas and arrives at Allerdale, the film settles into a rhythm of tea and secrets. Lucille plies her with tea made from “firethorn berries.” Edith notices Thomas’s absence from their shared bedroom at night. Red ghosts haunt the halls. One tricks her into opening a closet, where she finds wax phonograph cylinders. In the cellars she finds a locked trunk engraved with the name “Enola.”
Jessica Chastain Owns Every Room She Enters
Chastain is the reason to watch. Lucille is the film’s engine, and Chastain plays her with a stillness that reads as menace. Wasikowska is given less to do — Edith spends long stretches being poisoned, deceived or chased. Hiddleston is charming and little else. Charlie Hunnam’s Dr. Alan McMichael, the childhood friend, is a plot device with a pulse.
The supporting cast is fuller than those four names suggest. Jim Beaver plays Carter Cushing, Burn Gorman plays Holly, Leslie Hope plays Mrs. McMichael, Jonathan Hyde plays Ogilvie, and Doug Jones plays the ghosts of Edith’s mother and Lady Sharpe.
A Ghost Story That Fears Its Own Ghosts
Del Toro and Matthew Robbins wrote the script, and it was sold to Universal Pictures as a spec in 2006. Development stalled for years. Principal photography finally began at Pinewood Toronto Studios on February 10, 2014, with additional filming in Hamilton, and wrapped on May 16. Legendary Pictures produced the film with del Toro’s company Double Dare You. The source names The Haunting, The Innocents and The Shining as heavy inspirations. That is a heavy shelf to reach for, and Crimson Peak does not reach it.
Three Empire Nominations, $74 Million
Crimson Peak premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2015, and opened in the United States on October 16 in standard and IMAX formats. It earned generally positive reviews but underperformed at the box office, grossing $74 million worldwide. It picked up three nominations at the 21st Empire Awards, including Best Horror, and nine at the 42nd Saturn Awards.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2006 | Spec script sold to Universal Pictures |
| February 10, 2014 | Principal photography begins in Toronto |
| May 16, 2014 | Filming wraps |
| September 25, 2015 | Premieres at Fantastic Fest |
| October 16, 2015 | U.S. release, standard and IMAX |
The Romance Is the Weak Half
The problem is balance. The romance between Edith and Thomas never earns its pull, so the horror has to carry a story it did not build. The ghosts are gruesome and the mansion is magnificent, but the film’s heart is a marriage the audience never believes in. The source calls it a ghost story and gothic romance. Del Toro got the ghost story.
The craft is real. The production design, the clay, the snow, the house that remembers — those are the work of a director who knows exactly what he is doing. The screenplay is where Crimson Peak thins out. It explains too much in the back half, and the reveals land without weight because the film has already shown its hand.
This is a beautiful, uneven film. Worth seeing for Chastain and for Allerdale Hall. Not the gothic masterpiece it was aiming to be.
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