‘Peak’ falls flat despite lush backdrops
Print Edition
THE most pressing threat in Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror “Crimson Peak” isn’t the ooze-filled cauldrons of dead souls in the basement of the old Victorian mansion, nor the plotting, black-clad sister (Jessica Chastain), who serves a bitterly poisonous tea.
It’s the ever-lurking possibility that, at any moment, the lush, ornate tapestry of Del Toro’s film might swallow its performers whole.
It would be a grand death.
“Crimson Peak” is so lovingly wrapped in the stylish trappings of the genre that it’s one of the few movies worth it purely for the wallpaper.
It stars Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain — a fine trio of actors. But the film’s true artists are cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Thomas Sanders and costume designer Kate Hawley, who under command of Del Toro, summon an atmosphere gaga with all things gothic.
“Crimson Peak” casts a spell that fails to hold, but it’s unquestionably the work of a man who loves movies.
It opens with a flashback and a promise from Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) that “ghosts are real.” After the death of her mother, she visits Edith with a frightful warning: “Beware of Crimson Peak.” It’s a message that fails to impress.
The setting is turn-of-the-century Buffalo, where Edith lives with her father Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver). She wants to be a novelist, but her manuscript
(a ghost story) is condescendingly rejected. Advised to write a love story, she pleads that the ghosts are a metaphor for the past.
From England, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) comes to town with his mysterious sister Lucille (Chastain), in search of a grant for a contraption to mine the red clay beneath their home. Cushing, an established business man, quickly rejects Thomas, but Edith doesn’t.
The Sharpes have clearly duplicitous motives, but Edith swoons for Thomas. Just as they’re departing Buffalo, Edith’s father is killed.
Edith and Thomas wed and the trio returns to the remote Sharpe family manor in England, Allerdale Hall, where the movie moves into its more sedate, predictable house-of-horrors second half. A hole in the roof pours light and autumn leaves down the center, red clay bubbles beneath the floor boards, ghosts lurk in the closets and the bath runs blood red. It’s a fixer upper, indeed.
The movie settles into a “Notorious” — like plot where Edith is slowly poisoned while unearthing the Sharpe family secrets.
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