Crimson Peak
Crimson Peak Disappointment is director Guillermo del Toro’s latest effort to thrill audiences. While visually stunning the rest of the movie feels like a rushed mess from a much less experienced creative team.
Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is a woman too modern for her time. To cut forty-five minutes of needless build up out I’ll just say she suffers a huge loss and marries a man she has, apparently, fallen in love with over three or so days. The narrative never really shows any bonding between Edith and Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), in fact the narrative does incredibly little for any character development, but more on that later. Thomas’s sister, Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain) doesn’t seem to care about anything, including her brother, but we know she does care about him because she flat out says so again and again. That seems to be one constant theme in Crimson Peak, exposition. Alan McMichael (an under utilized Charlie Hunnam) is the only one with any real sense and sees something is odd about the Sharpe siblings. He investigates and the movies turns 90’s action flick.
The sarcasm is heavy in this write up since I just walked out of the theater and my head is still trying to find something positive to grasp onto. The more I think, the more I analyze, the more the movie is talked about, the more there is to not like.
To be fair to del Toro I will talk about the positives. Aesthetically Crimson Peak is phenomenal. The costumes, make up, settings, scenery, visual effects, use of lighting and color are all top notch. The time period (1901) was so specific in dress, especially for women, and the costumes are intricate and detailed. The colors and style used in everyone’s outfit, in every scene makes it clear nothing here was left to chance or seen as ‘good enough.’ Showing the characters in the titular location could have been done with computer graphics, and it likely was, but the graphics there are flawless. Bringing the characters to a 1901 Buffalo NY was pure movie making magic. It will remind you of the elaborate Five Points recreation in 2002’s Gangs of New York.
As you undoubtedly saw in the trailers Peak relies heavily on animation for the ghosts of the film. Showing the ghosts in the trailer is always a mistake, luckily there is still some enjoyment to be had in the movie itself (as far as the effects go anyway). The use of lighting was my favorite part of the aesthetics and cinematography. Subtle changes in light, color, and shadow highlight, or lowlight, the importance in every scene. Foreshadowing is best done through color since del Toro and Matthew Robbins forgot the meaning of subtlety when writing the dialogue.
The story of Peak is blatantly told in the first five minutes of the film. Even the most inept movie goer can easily guess the middle and end during what is essentially the prologue. Incase that isn’t enough for you the script actually flat out tells you what will be happening two or three more times. I was really hoping the ham fisted foreshadowing (to be generous) were red herrings and that the movie had more to offer. No such luck.
This ‘horror’ movie is without a single creepy tone or scary scene. It goes from intriguing, to bland, to over the top with such jarring changes you feel as if something is missing, but are too busy checking your watch to see when the movie will finally wrap up the story you guessed 90 minutes prior.
With such a talented cast I was hoping to lean on an excellent performance or two given the dull story. Again, I was hoping against hope. This is no fault of the actors. Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, and Burn Gorman have all proved themselves in other projects that are worth your time more than Crimson Peak. The characters they portrayed here aren’t so much characters as cogs that need to be inserted and tweaked a certain way to get the movie to the next disappointing scene. They did the best with what they were given, they just weren’t given anything of note.
This could really go on for quite some time. Everytime I think of a specific scene fifteen things that were done wrong jump in my face. It’s worth mentioning just a couple final parting observations. Apparently Crimson Peak was without a script supervisor since the continuity was laughable. The ADR also felt very last minute where the movie looked more dubbed than looped. Did test audiences really not understand every single time the plot was jammed down their throats so the day before release lines were plugged in to cover it up?
I left the theater very disappointed but thinking the movie was ‘okay.’ Before I got to my car for the two mile drive home and the starting of this write up I was at the point where I feel del Toro should cut me a check for twenty six dollars and give me my evening back so I can see Bridge of Spies instead.
