cult film freak: GUILLERMO DEL TORO DIRECTS CRIMSON PEAK

Written by James M. Tate / 10/16/2015 / 1 Comment / 2015 , horror

GUILLERMO DEL TORO DIRECTS CRIMSON PEAK

10/16/2015 | 1 Comment

year: 2015

A classy stab at the Costume Period Piece Horror ala Hammer Films with a poisoned dash of Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS, Guillermo Del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK flows like an elegant robe worn at a fancy party where the uninvited guests are initially more intriguing than who's throwing it: But after the build-up is crashed by ghoulish creatures so bloody computer-animated and right out in the open, it's like being awakened from a suspenseful nightmare by a shrieking alarm clock.

Wraiths aside, the story itself is a creative Film Noir, taking you into the misunderstood mindset of an anti-elegant "poor rich girl" played by Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing (her fictional last name an obvious homage for Hammer's stock actor, Peter): she's a would-be author instantly smitten by a dark and slickly handsome young man from England with a lovely piano-playing sister in tow. Edith's millionaire father doesn't trust these strangers, and for very good reason: which isn't a spoiler in this review since the movie itself spoils the mysteriously ambiguous characters far too soon...

A shame since PEAK is visually a flowing, glowing, gorgeous and artistically dynamic Victorian era endeavor but with a cover so pleasing, it's hard not to judge the flawed interior: Eventually winding up within a Gothic English mansion so aesthetically cursed, haunted and outright doomed, there's nothing left to shudder about, leaving only a convoluted backstory-plot to both unravel and eventually, like that overblown CGI, disintegrate altogether.

RATING: **1/2

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Tags : 2015 , horror

James M. Tate

1 comment:

Marlene DetierroNovember 17, 2015 at 1:07 AM
Del Toro's best film? Not quite, but it's the most detailed, the most elegant and the most femenine of all.

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