When Barry Sonnenfeld in 1991 brought The Addams Family to the big screen, one of the gags in the film involved a very young Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams performing a very bloody retelling of Shakespeare with brother Pugsley. I like to imagine Crimson Peak is the creation that might have exploded from the mind of the character as an adult.
Mia Wasikowska is Edith Cushing, daughter of a wealthy New York businessman and aspiring young author who is swept off her feet by Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a dashing young scion of minor English landed gentry who is traveling with his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) seeking investors to revitalize his family's lone asset, the red clay mines beneath their home. When she travels with them to their home, she finds the house practically a living entity, literally bleeding from the liquid clay seeping up through its boards which hide dark and tragic secrets.
I was unable to really connect with Guillermo del Toro's films until this one. The dark fantasies in his previous work had a sort of primal grotesqueness that I found aesthetically jarring, like a sonata with one sour note. Crimson Peak brings home to roost all the perfect lovely dark things and wallows in their glorious squalor. Everything fits perfectly. Perhaps I was primed after two seasons of Penny Dreadful, which could very believably integrate into this story with a very similar look and feel. Chastain captures the same spider-lady vibe presented by Eva Green, though that is aided substantially by the costumes. Extensively researched and meticulously crafted, they reflect the attention to detail in this period reproduction.
There is so much to explore in this film. Even if you manage to tear yourself away from wondering at the costumes and sets, one can get lost in the tapestry of symbolism. For instance, Burn Gorman's character Holly is the detective hired by Edith's father to uncover the secrets of Thomas and Lucille Sharpe. In heraldry, holly is used to symbolize truth. Anagrams are hidden in plain sight. The name 'Enola' is an anagram of 'alone' and the name of the house 'Allerdale Hall' is an anagram of 'All red a la Hell'.
One note early in the script is very self-referential when Wasikowska's Edith refers to the ghosts in her novel as metaphors for the past, just as the ghosts we see in the film are literally echoes of the past. More than that, though, the house itself is a metaphor for its broken inhabitants, standing torn and scarred by time but powerful and unyielding. This may be the characteristic that decides whether you are fan of Crimson Peak; does it resonate with your inner darkness?
Crimson Peak is Guillermo del Toro at the top of his game. He calls it a gothic romance, and it certainly is that, but also a dark fairy tale, a mirror Cinderella, and a haunted house story that harkens back to great horror films of decades past. I mentioned Addams Family, but the rich mystery of exploring an atmospheric edifice such as Allerdale Hall brings to mind The Haunting while the ghost story lent an otherworldly air somewhat akin to Watcher in the Woods, and a number of visual elements as well as a character name are clear homage to horror movies from Hammer Films. It is by far my favorite del Toro film, and I think I will never tire of rewatching it.
