Cringeworthy ‘Crimson’ never peaks
Clumsy, cliche-ridden horror flick does itself in without scaring us
Hiding a knife in her billowing Victorian petticoat, a damsel in distress endlessly battles the undead in the bloody, disappointing “Crimson Peak.”
Alas, Guillermo del Toro’s opulently designed Gothic horror movie tries so hard to turn the genre’s gender rules on their head that it collapses under the gloomy weight of its highbrow intentions.
Wide-eyed ingenue Edith Cushing, whose name harkens back to the Hammer Films canon, may look like a dainty porcelain doll bedecked in pearls and lace, but she’s actually a badass in a bustle. Unfortunately, the direc-
tor abandons all sense of subtlety in favor of eerie eye candy, ultimately letting the movie unravel into strange “Flowers in the Attic” style camp.
Mia Wasikowska (“Jane Eyre”) has her moments as the feisty Edith, who overcomes Victorian notions of propriety first to write a novel and then to fight for her life. But this “Wuthering Heights” is spiked with so many gruesome decomposing corpses and gratuitous jump-scares that the film soon squanders its atmospheric riches.
In its best moments, it’s a visually sumptuous fantasy reminiscent of the director’s jewel, “Pan’s Labyrinth.” The opening scenes are macabre indeed, with American heiress Edith confronting the creeping, wraithlike ghost of her dead mother with its grasping tendrils of doom. Edith is an author who writes about the supernatural because she has actually seen creatures, which should make her something other than a standard issue heroine-waif.
Unfortunately, Edith all too quickly succumbs to stereotype. She falls for the sinister charms of Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston from “Thor”), a baronet of the bizarre, and follows him to the dark thrall of Crimson Peak, a grim manor shrouded in mist and despair. She gets her mojo back, only to engage in a frightfully predictable game of cat and mouse with Sharpe’s twisted sister, Lady Lucille (a steely Jessica Chastain), even as the house seems to drown in a pool of its own blood.
You are pulling for Edith for about half the film, but once she enters the charnel house of Allendale Hall, the film descends into a mishmash homage of classic horror tropes, excessive CGI ghouls and downright cheesy lines of dialogue that utterly undercut the tone of an elegant chiller. The gorgeously rotting mansion, with its moaning green walls, cobweb-ridden hallways and gaping holes in the roof, may be the most believable character in the movie. Even the dog seems wasted as the bone-shattering violence piles up and the ghosts multiply, but the dread disappears because the characters are as shallow as the teacups full of the creepy “tea” Lucille keeps pushing on Edith.
Perhaps a little less money thrown at the sumptuous production values and more time spent on the workings of psychology would have given “Crimson” some of the intensity of the low-budget but far superior “It Follows,” whose existential menace lasts for days.
Certainly, Hiddleston usually has more presence than this, and his scenes with Wasikowska lack the sexual chemistry to give the love story any zing. Chastain tries to imbue the monstress Lucille with intelligence, but in the end she’s saddled with too many cliches to be truly unsettling. From the opening shot, the audience feels miles ahead of the characters, and smugness soon turns into impatience.
Del Toro’s gift has always been his mastery of the unexpected, the surprising political resonance of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the wry wit of “Hellboy.” Here, however, he forgets that less is more when it comes to fear. This haunted house flick has all the discipline and restraint of a Spirit Halloween store. Once the suspense is gone, all that’s left is the blood spatter.
From the first bludgeoning to the last dagger, “Crimson Peak” is so awash in buckets, tubs and vats of blood that it becomes a bit of a bore. The final tableau, with its long, lingering shots of yet another ghost with a message, reminds you of an amusement-park ride you can’t wait to get off. Contact Karen D’Souza at 408-271-3772. Read her at www.mercurynews. com/karen-dsouza.