Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Starring Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Hunnam
USA/Mexico/Canada, 2015
I skipped Guillermo del Toro’s take on ghost flicks, CRIMSON PEAK, back in 2015 when it originally came out, but I’m glad I’ve finally caught up with it. It’s not as good as his best flicks and not as bad as his worst, but it is as visually inventive and interesting as all of them.
This is the somewhat overstuffed turn-of-the-century tale of an aspiring writer (Mia Wasikowska) who is the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and finds herself seduced by a visiting inventor (Tom Hiddleston) who seeks to do business with her father. He’s got a creepy sister (Jessica Chastain) in tow, and when murder and marriage go down, our young heroine finds out the dubious duo reside in a sprawling, crumbling estate atop a mountain of red clay that seeps into the house as if the whole world is bleeding.
I say it’s overstuffed because the house is also haunted. Yes, the ghosts and hauntings shed light on the tragedies that have occurred in/around the house/sibling duo, and help our heroine figure out what’s going on, but they’re sort of ancillary to what’s essential a confidence plot, and if you’ve got ghosts in your movie they should never be ancillary.
I suppose one thing that sort of sidelines the ghosts is the fact that they’re all CGI, or if they’re not, they seem like they are, which you’d think would be a good technology to use to show see-through, floating beings but it’s not done well here and you end up with inconsequential cartoons flitting around. There’s a couple legit scares, don’t get me wrong, but they’re sort of in spite of the special effects, instead of because of them, and that’s a bummer, especially for such an otherwise visually sumptuous movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment