A deliciously twisted fairytale for grownups. Surprised not more love is given to this calibre of filmmaking.
Man, I didn't think they made gothic horror anymore. This was great.
I love all the costume design and set. They are very well done. The color are vibrant. I knew this was more of gothic romance than horror and knowing that going in makes this better. Not GDT's best movie but definitely worth a watch.
This is horrific in its moments of person-on-person brutality. There are some shockingly violent confrontations, which didn't really surprise me coming from del Toro but did when couched in the telling of what is nothing more than a romance-in-an-old-house story. Granted, the house is haunted, but the ghosts are secondary to the whole affair.
I loved the sets and the colors but was disappointed that this was not scary in the least. Jessica Chastain was great and Tom Hiddleston was a near perfect fit.
Thinking about it a bit more, this is probably my least favorite del Toro film (I haven't seen "Cronos" or "Blade II") but it's still good and worth seeing for its amazing art.
jessica chastain and tom hiddleston are hot and i'd let them gaslight me
This movie made me laugh. The terrible CGI "ghosts" and the lack of story made this a complete waste of time. The overly used "blood" everywhere and loose ends made the whole thing just bad. It didn't explain anything, leaving the viewer to assume absurd things to make it work, not that it helped.
Shit, bullshit, nonsense as you want This film has nothing to do with horror, it's just talking, talking and talking again. Almost the whole movie I was bored and fell asleep at the end, I watched it with only one eye and I was glad that I watched it to the end. The only thing that was positive about the film was the set design, masks, effects, etc., but that's not enough when the plot and script are worth a big slipper. So my rating is 4 out of 10 and I still narrowed my eyes.
Visually stunning, good acting, editing, but abysmal story. Would not watch if I could have my 90 min back. I do not recommend anyone to watch this.
All the hallmarks of a Del Toro film are here and this should be a home-run for the filmmaker. The production design is stunning, the casting is spot-on and there is an extended set-up in America that is intriguing. However, once the film moves to England, this often feels like Del Toro is repeating himself, notwithstanding the many references to other gothic films. Whilst the mystery surrounding the central characters is fairly easy to work out to anyone paying attention, what is ultimately more disappointing is that Del Toro has also chosen to repeat themes and ideas from his own body of work, most notably the far better Devil's Backbone, and despite the best efforts of the cast, the predictable nature of the plot make it difficult to invest emotionally in the characters. There is also a less tangible feel to the effects here that detract from film. Not terrible by any means, but a disappointment.
With a predictable and generic story like this, it's the actor's job to keep the viewer interested and allured so in the end you can say it was worth it, but they failed to do that. I feel everyone was a miscast, Jessica Chastain was bad, I didn't like her. Eva Green, for example, would have been perfect for that role (mostly because she knows how to work an accent unlike Jessica). Tom and Mia didn't connect at all, you can never feel love there so it loses impact. Also those appalling wigs Mia wore really threw me off! Really disappointing.
i had such high hopes for this one --- of course the visuals are haunting and fucking stunning (Guillermo del Toro is a master) but the story is super boring and u can basically figure out whats going on after the first 15 mins. no storytelling at all, so dont be dissappointed
Gothic movie
A beautiful well made gothic horror and love story
Just remember that gothic horror its a different kind of horror. Not the kind of movie with jumpscares and eventually nightmares to follow
Streamed via Netflix
Beautiful cinematography, gorgeous visuals, beautiful sets and costume, decent CGI ghosts, but it felt hollow. It's predictable, drawn out and boring like a Disney live action romance. The story didn't do anything for me and I couldn't connect to any characters because there's no chemistry and they're lifeless. It's trying to be a good gothic romance but failed miserably. I prefer the oldies over this.
From Guillermo del Toro comes the fantasy horror film Crimson Peak. Mia Wasikowska stars as an aspiring young writer who marries an enterprising English businessman (Tom Hiddleston) and moves to his family estate where they live with his sister (Jessica Chastain); however she soon starts to see ghosts warning her of grave danger. The performances are pretty good, however the characters seem underwritten. Additionally, the ghosts are rather grotesque looking, but not in a scary kind of way, as they’re more bizarre and macabre. Still, the Gothic, surreal design of the mansion has an enchantment to it, and del Toro’s directing style brings a certain atmosphere. Crimson Peak delivers some chills, but it’s also overly monotonous and the storytelling is weak.
Filmed beautifully and stylistically. Gothic horror, with a tinge of mystery. The detail put into this is exactly what makes a Del Toro film worth the time.
Quite predictable, but most of his films generally are. It's all about the telling of the story, not so much the story itself.
Disappointing. It gets a bad rating automatically when a dog dies.
A deliciously 'visual' movie as Guillermo del Toro movies usually are. Quite brutal in places, obscenely so at times, particularly the bathroom murder! I've thought about and I still don't understand the significance of the red clay?
Watching to the conclusion I can't help but want to know what happened to Edith and Alan....
Eh, pretty to look at, scenery and costuming both, but the story was terribly predictable and the scares scarce.
Random, nit-picky rant incoming, please don't read. I mean come on, ghosts! That can tell the future! Like did the mom die and immediately know that her daughter was gonna attract and fall for a con-man that would cause the death of the father too? Does becoming a ghost automatically make you cryptic? Everything's the crazy spinster sister's fault? How much more cliched can you get. Also, the help must not have gotten the memo about keeping it on the down low that there's a revolving door of Lady Sharpes. I mean even the townspeople were more chill about it. For a pair of probably psychotic, murderous, incestuous siblings, the Sharpes don't seem quite good enough at keeping up a convincing charade to fool the fourth wife, you'll think they'll have enough practice by now. Also, come to think about it, the plan to off rich, desperate spinsters for their money is not bad, but does Eunice fit the bill? Didn't the originally targeted girl have a ton of family? And a nosy mother? What's with all the 'E' names? Just for that one plot device letter to work? I don't think this qualifies as a horror story, as the vaguely meta beginning speech by Edith straight out says, its more a story that happens to have ghosts in it, rather than any decent ghost story and the romance is incidental as well, barely believable love that all the characters profess to motivate their actions. Blah, the only thing that saved this from negative numbers was Hiddleston's lovely, but disappointingly short, hip swiveling. That and Chastain fully buying and selling the crazy.
It was extremely beautiful. The acting and scene were just breath-taking. The story, though, not so much. Unfortunately predictable from the first moment, it was rather disappointing. Very artistic experience, though!
Don't expect a scary movie, but it's creepy as hell...
A dark spirit, half bone and half horrifying mist, stalks down the hallway and offers a dire warning as the viewer gets a better look at her decaying visage. Our hero strolls into her new home, a regal buy decaying manor with a hole in the roof that lets flecks of snow drift down and makes the place look like something out of a haunted storybook. On a bed of virgin snow, a gigantic contraption whirs and emits steam, as eddies of red goop bubble up from the ground below.
These are the images that linger with you from Crimson Peak, the haunting pictures that director Guillermo Del Toro leaves you with in his tribute to Jane Eyre and stories in the same vein. And they’re beautiful images, each of them as lovingly constructed and striking and they may be grim or foreboding. Therein lie Del Toro’s strengths as a filmmaker. Whether it’s the film’s protagonist fleeing from an apparition or a murderer, or calm, symmetrical shot of the manor’s underbelly where vats of the blood-red goo that gives the film its title rest, or the ghostly visage of the doomed lover who provides a moment on of opportunity, Del Toro creates films that would work almost as well as silent pictures, where the design, the camera movement, and the pictures he paints tell the story as much as much as any dialogue and creates as much mood as any score.
But as a storyteller, Del Toro wears his heart on his sleeve, offering two-dimensional characters, archetypes and tropes that are well-deployed but nevertheless lack novelty, and subtext rarely sinks beneath the text. There’s nothing wrong with this exactly. The story of Crimson Peak--about an eccentric young woman who falls in love, imagines a different world beyond her doorstep, and then, when opportunity presents itself, find that her new life and her new family have more dark edges and hidden mysteries than she’d imagined when she dreamed of it—is familiar to anyone who’s read a novel from the Bronte sisters and their contemporaries. It manages to add some modern twists and turns, and the reveals are generally interesting, if not necessarily unexpected, but Del Toro creates a film that wants to surprise you with its visual flair more than with its narrative or themes.
It is, after all, a film where the protagonist has written a book, and describes it in terms that are clearly meant to apply to the film the audience is watching. She describes it as not a ghost story, but a story with a ghost in it, who is simply a metaphor for the past. Del Toro (who is also credited as a co-writer of the film) broadcasts the theme of the piece – people who are tied to, and trying to escape their histories, with little more than a wink at the viewer in the opening ten minutes of the film.
Crimson Peak, true to that introductory caveat, features those gruesome, awe-inspiring specters and other symbols throughout its run time, and steeps them in the notion that the villains of the piece in particular are doomed by their figurative ghosts as much as they are by the movie’s literal ones. The Sharpes are the inheritors of a family estate and a name that neither of them truly wants. The land used to be a giving place for the Sharpes, a land whose clay deposits provided for the family and once built up this grand manor and the people who resided it.
But when we enter Allerdale Hall, the clay deposits have dried up, the house is creaking and falling apart, and the latter-day Sharpes, find themselves burdened by that which once held their family aloft, now weighted down by their ties to this place and their family history. The metaphors and symbolism are not subtle. The stone black insects of London consume the pretty golden butterflies of Upstate New York. Thomas Sharpe tries desperately to gain the capital necessary to get his new machine up and running, one that may offer hope that the marrow may yet be sucked out of the decaying bones of Allerdale. The house itself is a living monument to the past the Sharpes cannot rid themselves with, of their family name, something that was once great, but which has long since decayed and which these two people have been twisted and trapped into becoming the unhappy stewards of.
The film works despite, or maybe even because of this. There’s little subtlety to these themes, rather, they are as big and brash and front and center as Del Toro’s trademark beautiful but disturbing images and otherworldly settings. If you miss the ideas that Del Toro offers, or the self-reflexive quality of the narrative with its literal storybook ending, you’re probably not trying. But Crimson Peak, like many of the works in Del Toro’s oeuvre, is less interested in burying the themes it’s operating with than it is dressing them up and draping them on a familiar story, this time the soapy thrills of the ingénue who meets a suitor with a secret.
Part of that is owed the incredible coterie of performers Del Toro has at his disposal to act out this pastiche. Tom Hiddleston, as he’s done so well as Loki, perfectly walks the line between someone who is villainous in his actions but sympathetic in his impulses. Thomas walks the line between the deceptions and horrors he has been complicit in, the partner in crime he cares for and wants to make whole, and the object of his affections who prompts him to become the mask he wears and aim to run away from the rotting corpse of their life and their name. Of all the characters in the film, his has the richest inner life, the most complexity in his motivation, and thus the truest tragedy.
Hiddleston, however, is not alone. Jessica Chastain is impeccable as always, projecting a carefully manicured calm that slowly gives way to a believable and even sympathetic deranged menace. Her Lucille Sharpe, more than anyone, has been gnarled by her parents’ misdeeds, the way that they squandered the Sharpes’ expected inheritance and left them with the deteriorating scraps, and Chastain carries these details with her as she plays the film’s heavy.
(Jim Beaver also brings all the warmth wrapped in a dignified stoicism that he brought to the character of Elsworth in Deadwood, in a role that is brief but important.)
Finally, Mia Wasikowska is more of a cipher as the film’s lead. She acquits herself well enough, essentially reprising her role as Jane Eyre in the 2011 film of the same name. But Edith Cushing is as much a conduit that the story flows through, and entrée into the world that Del Toro has created and the other, more conflicted characters populate, as she is one who moves the needle on her own. She presents as an audience surrogate, one who discovers the bends and cracks of this land and this story at the same time we do.
That story, more often than not, makes way for the pictures Del Toro paints on the screen. The colors and lighting of Crimson Peak, from the darkened aquamarine of the manor itself, to twizzler red that suggests the land itself is bleeding, to the golden-decked protagonist herself, Del Toro provides a sumptuous feast for the eyes in the midst of his throwback tale. These touches create the mood of the piece, the changes from excitement to concern to fear to panic. His symbols, his ideas, and his characters are like those images—more garish and bold than they are quiet and nuanced—but they’re also beautiful, a tribute to a literary past that, far from haunting the present, provides us with a blueprint for the striking power of the moving image once again.
45 min and i was about to sleep because of it. i won´t rate it because it wouldn't be fair. Style over substance is not the answer.
Really bad bad history. :-(
It's marketed very very wrong - It's not a horror movie, but a movie with horror in it (Ha!). It could be described as Pan's Labyrinth in gothic England with Pacific Rim visuals.
With that in mind I was able to enjoy this movie quit a bit.
Around this films release, people were asking Guillermo Del Toro for a horror film. He released short video's of haunting visuall effects of puppetry. What people began to expect was a typical horror film, but what Del Toro eventually made, was a Ghotic Romance thriller with rather horror in the back seat. These aren't your typical boring evil ghosts. There are legit some terrifying scenes in the film, but these shots are more haunting than anything jumping. It shocks you more visually and emotion, rather than slapstick jumpscary stuff you get usually.
Suprisingly there are some horrific violent confrontations between characters that gets too bloody, which makes all the red stand out in snow or the house. The house looks beautifull, you know Del Toro took care of it's look like it's a character on ot's own. All the furniture, the dust, cobwebs, the colours of the walls, all look like they come from a fantasy film. Which is expected in a Del Toro film.
Last thing to mention is how gorgeous the costumes in this film is. There is no way they could wear these dresses once every day back then, but whatever.
It's not a ghost story. It's a story with ghosts
This one is more flash than substance from beginning to end, starting with a thoroughly derivative story idea. Any hope that it had with me died a horrible death in the third act, mostly because of the utterly unbelievable and stupid devolution of the female protagonist. I was almost rooting against her, given how she sets herself up for everything that happens to her. Just an incredible series of bad decisions on her part. And really, the only casting decision that worked for me was the sister-in-law.
As usual with Del Toro it features GORGEOUS set design and cinematography. My first viewing when this came out left me pretty cold on it, but viewing it with fresh eyes, I gotta say... I kinda loved it. It's a throwback gothic costume drama with just the right amount of gross ghouls to keep a horror hound happy.
Not the spooky ghost story I was expecting. Although the mother was iconic.
Incest was the real horror all along.
Not the best of Guillermo del Toro's offerings, but pretty good! The imagery and costumes were amazing, in particular.
Such a visually appealing film, I enjoyed it
like what the fuck. surprisingly violent tbh. The Allerdale Hall score is beautiful.
I had pretty low expectations for some reason, but I was happy to see that this was not a bad movie at all. It was intriguing and entertaining.
I liked it. I didn't know it was supposed to be a horror movie, I hadn't watched the trailer prior to watching the movie and I didn't really know much about it.
There wasn't any chemistry between Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston even though I think they're great actors individually. It wasn't a make it or break it thing for me but it was something I noticed. The acting was good apart from that though.
Visually, it's a beautiful film and the story is pretty decent. The CGI and the ghosts are very so-so and even laughable at times, however, I don't think that is pivotal, there are lots of great movies with shitty CGI or shitty looking monsters.
It wasn't scary, there's a few jump-scares but that's about it. It is certainly pretty weird and can cause you to feel uneasy at times but mainly it's just an interesting story. Don't go into it expecting tons of jump-scares and gore.
I think it's a good movie to watch on a rainy, bleak day.
another master piece from Del Toro......alittle predictable but still amazing from start to finish
beautiful movie. I expected a ghost story, a scary movie but instead got a very stylish victorian love story with a darker layer. Pleasantly surprised. Beautifully filmed, extremely well cast and a good strong story.
So much drama! So much love! So much goth! Classical drama with a Del Toro twist. Loved it BUT kinda got lost in the middle.
Esperaba mas de la misma, muy sosa y algo decepcionante. La historia es lo que termina de darle ese sabor agridulce. A nivel visual muy excelente el trabajo realizado. La historia y algunas actuaciones dejan mucho que desear. Recomendada para un dia de esos que no tengas nada importante en la lista.
So good, looks amazing and is a seriously underrated film with a great cast.
Since I knew this was a Gothic Romance novel and I knew that they stayed 100% true to what those novels were, I knew exactly what the story was going to be about from the first minute. Originality wasn't something I expected or wanted. They only deviated in the fact that they made explicit something that in much of the gothic novels was only a subtle idea and we never get to fully experience.
Beautifuly done, my eyes found themselves inside one of those novels, and the acting was amazing. If you come into this movie expecting Jane Austen, you won't find it...because you're inside one of Mary Shelly's stories 100%.
nice photography and cinematic experience beautiful settings but story non existence, predictable and very common
Very beautiful movie, but the story is beyond generic and predictable. Also I did get trolled by the trailer apparently as I anticipated a completely different kind of movie...
I don't know why, although the plot is not the same, that movie looked to me like an adaptation of "The Fall of the House of Usher"... Weird...
Guillermo del Toro has a talent for creating the most romantic and disturbing dark fairytales, and this is no exception. Brilliant acting and script, although the special effects were (to me) somewhat ridiculous it added to the fairytale feeling. Maybe predictable at some points but not so much that it ruined the story. Incredibly extra, maybe, but breathtaking nonetheless.
Jessica Chastain carried this film on her back...
WHY WAS THIS SO FUNNY?! WHY DID IT TURN INTO A COMEDY?! -so many tears-
fairly generic storyline and a few jump scares, but its such a pretty film to watch.
Shout by Adam SpybeyBlockedParent2015-10-17T16:31:45Z
Don't go into this expecting a ghost story with lots of jump scares, because that's not what you get with this film. Even though there are some creepy scenes, it's more of a gothic romance story. I quite enjoyed it and if you're a fan of Del Torro im sure you'll enjoy it to :)