GUILLERMO DEL TORO DIRECTS CRIMSON PEAK

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