crimson peak
Guillermo del Toro’s hauntedhouse horror opens its doors...
DIRECTOR GUILLERMO DEL TORO
STARRING MIA WASIKOWSKA , TOM HIDDLESTON , CHARLIE HUNNAM , JESICA CHASTAIN
ETA 16 OCTOBER
With its gorgeous Victorian woodwork, parquet flooring and ample portraiture, this ominously lit hall could be straight out of any number of well-preserved NT properties to which elder relatives flock of a Bank Holiday Monday. But the sweeping staircase and hallway at the heart of this scene from Guillermo del Toro’s period horror Crimson
Peak are not, in fact, within a stately home in Cumbria, as per the story – such as the Wordsworth-approved Gothic revival Wray Castle in Hawkshead, say – but have been painstakingly recreated on set at Pinewood Toronto Studios. Given that, as the eagle-eyed will already have spotted, the bannister appears to be damaged and there are some decidedly anachronistic orange safety cones on the floor, it’s probably all for the best...
Director Guillermo del Toro is overseeing the aftermath of what appears to be a chandelier shattering. He and veteran filmmaker Matthew Robbins (writerdirector of Batteries Not Included) first wrote and sold the Crimson Peak script round the time of
Pan’s Labyrinth but directing duties on Hellboy II and Pacific Rim – not to mention the waiting game around shelved horror epic In The Mountains
Of Madness – conspired to delay the production. During that time casting inevitably altered, accursed newlyweds Edith Cushing and Sir Thomas Sharpe morphing from Emma Stone and Benedict Cumberbatch to Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston.
As to the story, while specifics remain secret – beyond revealing that it’s an Anglo-American ghost romance set at the turn of the 20th century – del Toro has happily cited a raft of genre favourites as his wider inspiration, notably “Robert Wise’s The Haunting [ 1963; remade with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones in
1999], which was a big movie, beautifully directed, with the house built magnificently” and The Innocents (1961), based on Henry James’ The Turn of
The Screw. In a bid to move away from the slipping-from-vogue cheap ’n’ fearful found-footage fad, del Toro is aiming to ape The Shining (“the Mount Everest of the haunted-house movie”), saying, “I loved the way that Kubrick had such control over the big sets he used, and how much big production value there was... I wanted this to feel like a throwback.”
Charlie Hunnam is reuniting with del Toro after Pacific Rim to play Dr Alan McMichael, who adores Wasikowska’s Edith but can only watch as “larger-than-life swashbuckling ladies’ man” Sir Thomas steals her heart. “I’ve always dreamed of having a long standing collaboration with a filmmaker and I hit the lottery with Guillermo,” says Hunnam. For anyone expecting him to belatedly break out his Christian Grey portrayal, think again: “He’s a totally different character than I’ve ever played,” says the erstwhile Sons Of
Anarchy star, “quiet, shy, thoughtful, stoic, taciturn – a very learned guy.”
Next to Hunnam, Wasikowska’s white-clad as Edith, the young American author who falls for Sir Thomas during his trip to the States with his sister, marries in haste and swiftly decamps across the Atlantic to the Sharpes’ ancestral home in the Lake District. Said sister is Lady Lucille Sharpe, as played by double Oscar-nominee Jessica
“Del Toro is aiming to ape The Shining”
Chastain, who clearly enjoyed her stint on the del Toro-produced fantasy-horror Mama. So much so, that she was willing to have a body cast done for the film, inviting the prospect of glorious gore.
Completing the love quadrangle is Hiddleston’s Sir Thomas, the dashing Brit whom del Toro has likened to French folk-tale character Bluebeard, whose multiple wives met mysterious ends.
So will young Edith get her Happy Ever After? Not without going through the wringer first, it seems. “It’s an almost classical gothic-romance ghost story,” says del Toro, “but then it has two or three scenes that are really, really disturbing in a very, very modern way. This is the first time I’m gonna try to do an adult R-rated movie in the English language...” And that’s not just hype, according to Stephen King who, along with writer son Joe Hill, was privy to a test screening in March. “Was treated to a screening of Guillermo del Toro’s new movie, Crimson Peak... Gorgeous and just fucking terrifying” raved King (ditto Hill: “Crimson Peak is Del Toro’s bloodsoaked Age Of Innocence, a gloriously sick waltz through Daphne Du Maurier territory”), adding “Crimson Peak electrified me in the same way Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead electrified me when I saw it for the first time way back in the day.” If the man who wrote The Shining says your haunted-house horror is up to snuff, you know you’ve done something very wrong very right.