Movie 47: Crimson Peak

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver.

Director: Guillermo del Toro.

My relationship with Guillermo del Toro has always been sort of love/hate.  A lot of it, I think, does have something to do with how he's generally treated by the fans, primarily in that he's hailed as one of the greats in Horror history despite a track record that I feel is spotty.  On one hand, there is The Devil's Backbone and Cronos.  On the other hand, there's Mimic and Hellboy.  In the middle you get the strong-yet-overrated and really not a horror flick Pan's Labyrinth and the mostly mediocre but somewhat entertaining Pacific Rim.  Somewhere in there, people have found it prudent to declare him as some sort of superhero in the horror film arena, which makes no sense to me.  

It also annoys me when people credit him with The Orphanage.  He did not direct that film.

The thing is, I think he has some chops as a film-maker at the end of the day. He has a way with certain visual flare and camera movement that is very strong.  I just don't think much of most of his films.

I always do my best to keep an open mind when seeing, well, anything at all ever.  In that spirit, I went into Crimson Peak as blind as I possibly could and hoped for a great film.  I was determined to remain objective and receptive to what was being offered, and did my best to ignore that many friends of mine raved about how great it was.  I was going to hope for the best, but manage my expectations.  I expected to like it, but if I were to hate it, I was going to be damn sure it wasn't just my expectations being too high or being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

In truth, I ended up somewhere in the middle.  I didn't love it, for sure, but I didn't hate it, either.  There were some really bad things happening, but there were also good things.  In the end, they more or less cancelled each other out and left me with a middle-of-the-road and mostly hollow reaction.

I'm torn with how to approach a review of the film.  Do I separate the good and the bad into neat piles and ruminate on both?  Do I go good, then bad, then back to good, then bad again?  How best to approach a film that provides complete polar opposites in quality film-making all at once?

I've attempted to write my thoughts down in a more fluid manner about three times.  I feel I'm left with no other option than to just give you a list. Let's just break it up.

The Good:

At its best, Crimson Peak excels at being a love letter to the old Universal ghost stories of the thirties and forties.  Del Toro fills his movie with floating steadicam shots, actors with classical beauty and facial features, period costumes and set pieces.  Even many of the editing transitions involve full screen wipes and zoom cuts, both of which are cleverly deployed.  The story: centering around a vibrant young girl, finding her way in the world, falling in love with a dark, mysterious stranger...the archetypes and scenarios would be right at home in the old black and white days of cinema.  In particular, a bright and charming scene where Hiddleston's Thomas Sharpe demonstrates the "british" version of the waltz (where, when executed properly, the entire dance can be performed without extinguishing a candle held in the dancers hand) is very old school, and works well.

The set design, especially the old decaying manor lead character Esther is whisked away to by Sharpe and his sister, Lucille, is superb.  Every hallway and foyer are perfectly crafted down the smallest detail.  The film has two basic set pieces (again, very much like the old 1930s stuff), with the simple-yet-effective technique of establishing one as a warm, cozy place while the other is cold and sprawling.  This works both due to in-movie establishing and a very strong use of set design: the viewer almost feels cold while Wasikowska is hanging around the massive manor.  In addition to this, del Toro throws in some other interesting details: big industrial machinery, clay foundations that "bleed" red through walls, the ground and even the faucets, big whiteout snowstorms, and various other visually stimulating techniques utilizing color and space.  It as technically sound as anything else.

The performances vary in range and quality wildly.  Hiddleston is his usual charming but slightly off-putting self.  Wasikowska is at turns vaguely sympathetic but mostly wooden(which isn't entirely her fault, see "The Bad"). Jim Beaver is very warm. Then there is Chastain, who relishes devouring the scenery and spitting venom with every line. Chastain is undeniably entertaining, even if I'm not entirely sure it's actually a good performance. In many ways, it's Hiddleston and Chastains film.  Honestly, I believe things may have been stronger if Chastain and Wasikowska had switched roles, but they do a good enough job with their perspective characters nonetheless.  

The Bad:

Honestly, the script and story are very weak.  Dialogue very rarely shines, plot points are woven in and forgotten(or, more often than not, never needed in the first place), logic lapses rear their ugly heads.  Esther is a very uneven lead: one moment she is willful and stubborn, the next she's cowering about limply.  It seems very much like nobody could make up their mind on who Esther is, exactly. Luckily, this is somewhat offset by the assured characterization of her co-stars, whose motivations and personalities are very clear.  The latter is also something of a problem, though: there are no real surprises to be found anywhere.  The nature of the Sharpes is incredibly obvious, almost to the point that they may as well just have looked at the camera and told the audience who they were.  Every effort seems to have been made to telegraph things so pointedly that it borders on insulting. 

This telegraphing is done no favors by an overly simplified story.  One spends most of the running time hoping for something more epic, something that would fit the stylish overtones in play, as well as some of the clever details that were thrown in.  Instead, it's a very run-of-the-mill limp through familiar territory.

There are ghosts.  They look terrible.  Almost laughably so.  No chills are elicited by these black and red blob-things that occasionally show up to do almost nothing of note.

Tonally, Crimson Peak is all over the place.  It runs with the Gothic mentality one moment, becomes somewhat cartoonish the next.  There's a real sense of emotional imbalance throughout the whole thing, and not in a way that feels in any way metaphorical.  The scenes of violence, when they occur, are very physical and shocking, but then there are scenes of Esther that come off as incredibly flighty. 

The worst sin, however, is that the film never seems to develop any real suspense or atmosphere. 

There is a point in the film where Thomas Sharpe is forced to break the heart of poor lead Esther by trashing her novel.  Sharpe proclaims it unconvincing, citing that she knew nothing about love or life, only what other artists told her about.  It was notable primarily because it describes many of the problems of Crimson Peak rather pointedly: del Toro clearly sought to make an old timey Gothic Horror Film-and does succeed in some ways-but seemed primarily to only understand gothic storytelling through his absorption of other better gothic stories.  While the set pieces of beautiful and well assembled, they provide no feelings in the audience.  In essence, del Toro has painted the atmosphere on the walls and forgets to earn anything real on top of it.

While the film comes alive in its last act in a big way, it doesn't change the unfortunate fact that Crimson Peak is a bit dull and short of any sort of activity or conflict.  The characters are mostly never able to provide anything more than their limited parts allow-save perhaps for Hiddleston, who adds more depth to his role than one would have assumed possible given the work everyone else is doing here-and it begins to wear on the viewer.

Final Thoughts: I'd say that Crimson Peak is, at best, a technical high point in the career of a Director who clearly has some excellent visual capabilities.  At worst, it is a very poor script that is only marginally successful in aping Gothic story-telling.  It's mostly well acted and well detailed, but clumsily executed and, more often than not, dull.  Because the good is SO very good, and the bad is SO very bad, I'm left at an interesting place somewhere in the middle.  I might say that the bad outweighs the good just a tad, mostly because of the obvious talent of everyone involved.  

Final Rating: Three Stars.