Love, Gothic, and Haunting Sets: A Critical Review of Crimson Peak (2015)
Film: Crimson Peak. Year: 2015. Genre: Horror/Drama. Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Review Contains Spoilers*
In Crimson Peak, the formula is familiar to those of us who devour anything related to gothic literature: a woman is charmed by a tall, mysterious man and is whisked to a decaying mansion in the English countryside following her father’s death. There, living alongside his spinster sister, she begins to suspect that awful things had occurred in the house, a place where ghosts literally walk around most corners, and her new family are hiding disturbing secrets. Although this is the bread and butter of gothic literature, it can be as equally problematic as it hits the nail on the head. And it is a good thing.
The film follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), a sheltered, aspiring novelist who catches the eye of Sir Thomas Sharpe Baronet (Tom Hiddleston). Upon his arrival at her father’s mining company, where he seeks a benefactor to accommodate his new invention that would revolutionise clay mining, Thomas quickly takes an interest in Edith and her short stories.
“Well, whoever wrote it, it’s um, rather good, don’t you think?” Thomas tells her, plucking fresh pages from her new typewriter. “It certainly captured my attention.” Thus, the two are a match. While this appears as the conventional “meet cute” where two characters instantly connect, there is much more depth to the story. Edith’s journey isn’t just a romance; it is a dark coming-of-age tale. As the narrative unfolds, she transitions from a sheltered young woman with bookish aspirations to someone confronting the complexities of love, darkness, and the disturbing secrets of Allerdale Hall.
Her relationship with her overprotective father is tender just as her relationship with Thomas Sharpe is a powerful, darkly transformative romance.
As the Baronet weaves his way into Edith’s life under the guise of true love, her father (Jim Beaver) suspects that Thomas and his sister Lucille may be hiding a dark secret from them. However, when her father dies gruesomely, Thomas makes his move and quickly marries Edith. He takes her away from her grief in the bustling city of Buffalo to the scarlet hills of Allerdale Hall. “Crimson Peak,” the locals call this place due to the ground beneath being so rich in ore that the soil turns red. This term — “Crimson Peak” — is familiar to Edith. All her life she has encountered the ghost of her mother, crooked and black-figured, who utters but the same words, “Beware of Crimson Peak.”
So far, everything seems to be as conventional as it can come in the genre of gothic romance. However, it proves that a talented cast and a knowledgeable director can save a story from shrivelling inside the furnace of convention. At times, Crimson Peak emerges as a kind of well-wrapped gift fit for a gothic aficionado. The devil is indeed within the details, and they are worth pointing out.
In writing his script (co-written with Matthew Robbins), director Guillermo del Toro may borrow gratuitously and understandably from Walpole, Radcliffe, Poe and M.R. James, as well as other influential gothic writers of the previous centuries, but he excels more as a stylist. His set designs are complimented by rich details. The whole construction of Allerdale Hall is intricate and melancholy. It is intertwined with the characters’ psyches much like the way their clothing reflects their personalities.
Along with the set designs, the colour palettes seem to anchor the film perhaps more so than the script itself. The film is split between Buffalo and Cumberland. The colours of the two disparate cities create a sharp contrast, lifting viewers’ moods in the former city but bringing them down to the drudgery and ruin of the latter country town.
From the sky and city buildings to Edith’s father’s mansion, everything in Buffalo is depicted in warm tones of walnut, symbolic of a place focussed on progress. In contrast, Cumberland is associated with the colour of decay. At Allerdale Hall, teal and rust-coloured tapestries and faded yellow walls hint at the waning legacy of past wealth and prosperity.
Colour and costumes play vital roles in the story, helping to deepen character and hint at secret intensions behind vibrant dresses and fancy words. Thomas typically wears sharp black suits and expensive hats, concealing his financial struggles from the world. In a scene where she plays the piano for a group of people attending a ballroom dance, Lucille begins with an extravagant scarlet dress signifying passion, sensuality, and intensity. As the plot moves on, however, a shift in progressively darker dresses reveals her psychological instability and disturbing past. Look closely enough at one or two of these dresses and there can be seen dead black moths stitched into the fabric. These are just some of the physical symbols that del Toro wishes his viewers to take notice of, as they represent the two sides of transformative love: one warm and inviting, the other cold and decayed.
Before Edith is married to Thomas, Lucille tells her mournfully about the nature of moths that they find in a park: “They take their heat from the sun, and when it deserts them, they die.” It does not get any more explicit than this in the way of symbolic representations of characters. Exemplified by Wasikowska’s portrayal of a naïve, impressionable young girl, along with her flowing yellow dresses, Edith happens to be the sun in Lucille’s disturbing analogy. But she is also a butterfly, cocooned within her father’s wealthy mansion in Buffalo before marrying Thomas. And Lucille, in classic villainess fashion, is a black moth.
Ironically, Jessica Chastain, who plays Lucille, shines more brightly than her co-stars at times. Her character seems much more complex than the spinster sister trope characteristic of the gothic. Her lingering, questioning looks and her soft but firm voice offer viewers glimpses into her true motives that blend well with her Lepidoptera-styled gowns. Most notably, she does not feel physical pain. She clenches scorching scrambled eggs in her palm and barely flinches when her skin comes into contact with the sharp blade of a butcher knife. Yet she is vulnerable enough to tear up every so often and scream at Edith with fury suggestive of emotional pain. She is jealous of her sister-in-law’s charmed upbringing back in Buffalo and naïve views on love. Everything about her, from the macabre gowns she wears to the locked doors she opens, reveals a lonely, shattered persona with a complex and traumatic history.
If there is anything in Crimson Peak that doesn’t work as well as it should, it happens to be Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), who seems to serve primarily as a safety net for Edith’s ruined love story. Although Hunnam delivers a solid performance with the material given to him, offering viewers a reassuring presence in the film, his character’s potential for deeper development was far from fully realised.
Whilst del Toro might not have reinvented the gothic with his film, he has created a gateway into that old world of haunted English castles and morally ambiguous villains. He has surely created a strong presence in the world of the gothic. We should be glad that he has always lived in this castle.
References:
del Toro, G. (2015). Crimson Peak. Universal Pictures.
