STACK Nov #133

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When his long gestating H.P.
Lovecraft passion project, At
the Mountains of Madness, was
shelved once again, visionary director
Guillermo del Toro threw himself into
this lavish period ghost story, and the
result is a ravishing fusion of pure gothic
melodrama, romance and haunted house
horrors. Think Jane Eyre goes to Hell.
“Ghosts are real. This much I know.”
says Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska),
who as a little girl received a cryptic
warning from her dead mother's spirit to
"beware of Crimson Peak". 14 years later
the meaning becomes apparent when
she's swept off her feet by charming
Brit Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston),
becomes his bride, and is taken to live in
his crumbling family estate – a cavernous
mansion located atop a mine filled with
scarlet clay that regularly oozes through
the floor and walls. The decaying Allerdale
Hall (which makes Hill House look cosy) is
filled with snow flurries, enormous moths
and ghosts of the past; it's also home
to Sharpe's frosty sister Lucille (a terrific
Jessica Chastain) and sinister family
secrets which Edith must uncover if she's
going to make it out alive.
Don't enter Crimson Peak expecting
a conventional haunted house movie like
the overrated The Conjuring: the ghosts
are largely incidental to a plot – which
pays homage to M.R. James, Daphne
du Maurier's Rebecca, Hammer Horror
and the giallo thrillers of Mario Bava
– grounded in an era when candelabra-
wielding damsels in distress fled down
dark corridors in their nightgowns.
Art directed to the max, this is a truly
gorgeous looking movie, drenched in
primary colours (notably red) and the
meticulous attention to detail that is del
Toro's forte. There's no doubt whatsoever
this is a GDT film, with his signature
flourishes all present and correct:
elaborate production design, wispy
apparitions, black umbrellas, steampunk
machinery, and bursts of graphic
bloodshed.
Today's audiences, force-fed a diet of
disposable, formula spookshows from
Blumhouse productions, will probably find
this far too quaint for their taste, but fans
of measured, old school ghost stories will
love every sumptuous frame.
Scott Hocking
FURTHER VIEWING: The Haunting (1963),
The Devil's Backbone
At the mansion of madness.
CRIMSON PEAK RELEASED: Now Showing
DIRECTOR: Guillermo del Toro
CAST: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica
Chastain, Tom Hiddleston
RATING: MA15+
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028 NOVEMBER 2015