Crimson peak is no Pan’s Labyrinth. Of course, that is obvious enough, but what I mean to say is that where Pan’s Labyrinth successfully intertwined drama, fantasy, and horror with a fresh sense of realism, Crimson Peak falls, face first, onto the hard mattress of mediocrity, overwhelming Gothic style and architecture, and poor love story. Indeed, it is with deep sadness that I must report to you my utter disappointment when watching Guillermo del Toro’s new “horror” creation.
Crimson Peak is tremendously difficult to write about without giving away too …show more content…
Much like in an Edgar Allen Poe macabre story, wind howls and blood drips down walls and up from beneath floorboards. The characters are draped in the darkest of dark cloth, except for Edith’s golden gowns, and lit by candle light. The disfigured, anxious ghosts and the Victorian Gothic mood set my mind off dizzy and wondering of possible ghastly and grim story lines (due to the film’s “Beware of Crimson Peak – warning” marketing campaign). Instead, the story and coherence were sacrificed to sensation and del Toro’s sacred pledge to excess.
Indeed, the first part has an immaculate tone and builds up some kind of mystery and suspense, but the horror never kicks in fully. Albeit the desolate windswept, blood oozing, gothic mansion and the Victorian apparitions, wisp thin as if ink diffuses in water, there is nothing sinister about the story. At least it is nothing that we have not seen. There are jump-out-of-the-seat inducing moments, here and there, and a few amongst the audience in the cinema vocalized a surprised scream. But for its most parts, the film fails to satisfy in any creepy, unsettling, horror