- Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
- Written by Guillermo Del Toro, Matthew Robbins
- Stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 59 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yAbFYbi8XU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
We start out the movie with the statement that ghosts are real. But it’s a little more complicated than that when there are multiple ghosts with multiple motives. It looks good, it moves well. It’s interesting how it starts at the ending, and then we see how things get to that point.
Synopsis
“Ghosts are real,” says Edith narrating. She talks about her mother’s funeral when she was ten years old. “There were no goodbyes… until the night she came back,” she adds. We watch a black, ghostly thing talk to her in her bedroom late at night. It’s not a friendly visit. Credits roll.
Fourteen years later, in Buffalo, New York, Edith runs into Dr. Alan, who has returned to town to set up a new practice. We see that Edith is an outsider in the local cliques. She’s a writer, but the publisher doesn’t like ghost stories. She thinks it’s because she’s a woman, so wants to type her story to disguise her feminine handwriting.
Thomas Sharpe arrives to talk to her father, Carter Cushing, about investing in his digging machine invention. He looks at her story and likes it, which impresses Edith. He likes ghost stories, and she suddenly likes Thomas. Carter refuses to give him money because he’s not a working-class man. Dr. Alan is very much into Edith, but she just likes him as a trusted friend.
Not long after, Edith sees the woman in black again. It tells her to beware of Crimson Peak, whatever that is– she’s never heard of it. Thomas Sharpe arrives downstairs to talk, and he invites her to the party that she had declined to attend with Alan. Edith meets Lucille, Thomas’s sister. Thomas dances a waltz with Edith, which shows up everyone else in the place, annoying them all, especially Dr. Alan.
Edith’s father doesn’t approve either and orders Mr. Holly to investigate them. Alan, trying to impress Edith, demonstrates spirit photography, which allows a camera to photograph ghosts. Lucille creeps out Edith with her apparent obsession with death. Carter confronts Lucille and Thomas about their poverty; Carter thinks Thomas is a gold-digger. He pays them to leave and break it off with Edith. Thomas is mean to Edith at Carter’s command; he does as he’s told.
The next morning, Carter is murdered. We don’t see the non-ghostly killer, but it could be Thomas. Thomas sends a letter to Edith explaining what happened last night. Edith runs to their hotel, but they’re already checked out. She soon runs into Thomas, who still hasn’t left town yet, and they immediately make up.
The police come, they think Carter’s death may have been an accident. He slipped. Thomas is right there for Edith, which she… appreciates. Things go quickly from there and he takes his new wife home to Allerdale Hall, a big, old place that’s falling apart. There’s a giant hole in the roof, and the wood is rotting. The red clay has gotten into everything. The wind howls, the water runs red, and the whole place is just a ghost’s dream house.
Edith gets several glimpses of something dark wandering the house. Thomas shows her his workshop, he’s a bit of a tinkerer and inventor. Every time Edith and Thomas start to get close, Lucille interrupts with tea or something.
A ghost leads Edith to some old recordings. She sees it clearly this time, and it’s a nasty old dead thing. When Thomas refers to the area as “Crimson Peak,” which Edith clearly remembers from her previous visit from the ghost. Meanwhile, Dr. Alan is still questioning how things went with Carter’s death and Thomas’s strange actions. Mr. Holly gives him additional information – Thomas was already married before he came to town.
The ghosts start warning Edith to get out of the house. Thomas and Lucille try to dissuade her from leaving. “How would she know about mother?” asks Lucille. Thomas and Edith get trapped in a motel in town during a snowstorm, and they finally have sex for the first time. While they’re in town, Edith gets a letter addressed to Enola, Thomas’s other wife. She then learns about two more wives. How many has he had? Could they have wound up in the bottomless pit of thick red mud in the basement? All signs point to ‘yes.’
Edith just won’t drink the damned tea that Lucille keeps trying to give her. How infuriating! Edith finally listens to the recordings and learns that Thomas has been burning through the rich wives; they’ve been drinking poisoned tea! She tries to leave, but the snowstorm is too much.
Thomas seems to be changing his mind; he warns Edith not to drink the tea. Edith talks to the ghost; she wants to know what they want. Are they trying to kill her, or are they trying to help her? Edith catches Thomas making out with his sister. Lucille throws Edith from the third floor as someone bangs on the front door; it’s Alan, who patches up Edith.
Lucille demands that Thomas kill Alan before he can steal away Edith. He has evidence that Lucille killed her own mother when she was 14. Lucille stabs him on the way out. She then makes Thomas finish him off, but he may have fudged the job on purpose. Thomas tells Alan to get Edith out through the mine shaft. Lucille admits to killing Carter, so then Edith stabs her with her fancy pen. When Thomas tries to talk Edith into just leaving the rotted old house, she stabs him in the face. He dies quickly.
As is always the case with good haunted house films, Edith and Lucille get into a knife fight. They migrate from one room to the next and end up in the basement next to the mud-well where Alan still waits. Lucille upgrades to a huge meat cleaver and they go outside to chase each other around Thomas’s digging machine prototype. Finally, Thomas’s ghost distracts Lucille so that Edith gets the upper hand.
Commentary
I don’t care how ornate or beautiful the house once was, that place is simply uninhabitable. There’s mold everywhere, leaves and snow falling through a huge hole in the roof into the living room and water damage everywhere. Even without ghosts, it’s just a deathtrap.
Visually, it’s a very pretty movie, with lots of oversaturated, high-contrast colors but still managing to be a “dark” toned horror film. The costumes and acting are good. The CGI monsters don’t hold up terribly well, and this film is only a few years old. The story is… a little generic. It’s a haunted-house tale, and it doesn’t go much beyond what’s expected of it.
Other than cryptic and ominous warnings, the ghosts don’t really do anything. All the evil here comes from the messed-up siblings. Still, it looks good, it’s not draggy. Overall, I do like it, but don’t come here looking for a straight-up monster movie.