It’s kind of a given that the answer is yes. Presumably, every piece of art is a look
inside the mind of the creator, and there are coded messages hidden within the
overall package. That’s something of an
unsettling thought, knowing that the creator’s soul is -- intentionally or not
-- inside a story; I’ll probably have a lot of explaining to do if/when my
stuff ever makes it out there. But for
now, I have to think about what del Toro’s saying via Crimson Peak.
I’ll be the first to admit that he was never
really on my radar until Pacific Rim (the
first movie I was consciously aware he spearheaded, and incidentally one
I enjoyed a lot). But in light of
his troubles with Konami and Silent Hills,
and his other cancelled video game projects, and the uneasy state of Pacific
Rim 2, you can’t help but wonder if all of it is taking a toll. (Though the timetables don't necessarily sync up; games and movies take a LONG time to make, IIRC.) And then I find out that Crimson Peak lost in the box office to Goosebumps, and after crying enough
to have turned into a crusted and powdery husk I just -- I don’t know, I feel
like the guy needs a hug. Anyone could,
really, but I feel like he needs one the most.
Like he was born a universe where very few things go his way, and only
by receiving enough love can he return to the proper dimension.
It’s okay, Mr. del Toro. If it makes you feel any better? I think you made an awesome movie.
Time to do that thing I do where I ruin movies -- which I’ll
admit is made possible by virtue of my good friend, SPOILERS. He spoils everything that happens, and will
also steal your wallets and food. As one
would.
Here’s the setup.
The star of the movie is Edith Cushing, daughter of a famous
businessman, and an aspiring writer -- one that just so happens to be able to
see ghosts. Technically she’s only seen
one ghost at one point in her life -- her mother -- but it’s enough to give her
an important message: “Beware of Crimson Peak.”
But wouldn’t you know it, the ghost returns to give her the same message,
right around the time when Thomas Sharpe rides in on the wind from
England.
His mission?
He wants to get big daddy Carter Cushing to back the development of his
mining machine, which looks like a giant steampunk version of Mousetrap. And so begins Edith’s entanglement with
Thomas, his sister Lucille, a dark scheme, even more ghosts, and the mystery of
Crimson Peak…chief among them, just what Crimson
Peak is supposed to be, since Ghost Mom seemed more eager to scare the corset
off her daughter than adequately explain the source of impending danger.
Also, let’s go ahead and take this time to get all the jokes about Alice, Loki, Murph,
and Raleigh Becket being in the same movie.
This post is already going to be long enough.
It’s worth noting upfront that Edith and Thomas
form a relationship -- or at the very least, mutual respect -- early on. The reason for that is because even if
they’re in different fields, they’re struggling together to make their dreams come
true. Edith wants to be a writer, but
her manuscripts get shot down on a regular basis by publishers who demand “more
romance” out of her, or just look down on her because she’s a woman. Meanwhile, Thomas made the journey across the
pound while effectively penniless, all so he could sell his machine, revive the
Sharpe mining business, and kinda-sorta revolutionize the industry…and he can’t
even get his foot in the door because a bunch of suits (Edith’s dad chief among
them) don’t like the cut of his jib.
Even with their talent and resolve, neither one can break through
because a bunch of old men are playing gatekeeper.
There’s something eerily resonant about that, even
for those who aren’t into creative industries.
(But for those that are? Well, it’s
relatable -- and that’s all I’ll say on that for now.) But it feels like this is one of those areas
where del Toro put a piece of himself and his troubles into the movie. Granted he’s not exactly a beaten-down dog --
he got to make this movie, after all -- but it almost felt like what Edith
dealt with were things he dealt with.
The suits just don’t get him, and don’t feel like getting him. That’s pretty presumptuous to say, since he
has seen some successes. But how many
failures did it take for him to reach that point? How many times did he hear “no” before he got
to hear “yes”? How much stuff has been
rejected and/or canned even with his
beloved name attached?
It’s possible -- probable, even -- that I’m
reading too far into this. But even if
it’s not about del Toro, it is about the movie’s central theme: slaves to passion. And there’s only one way that theme could
ever be explored thoroughly -- which leads me to the greatest strength this
movie has.
Crimson Peak
is not a horror movie. It’s a gothic
horror romance. And it’s stronger for
it.
If Crimson
Peak was about wall-to-wall scares, it might have sucked. But it’s not.
It’s about the romance between Edith and Tom, and the relationship
between all of these interlocking characters -- between Carter, between
Lucille, and even between Raleigh Alan.
Chalk this up to personal preference, but I find that significantly more
interesting than how much gore a movie can throw in my face, or how blatant its
attempts to try and scare me. You can’t
spell “characters” without “care”, after all, and setting up a movie so that
its entire point is to systematically kill them off -- and remove the very best
tool a story has -- strikes me as more counterproductive than a car with tree
stumps for wheels.
Can you tell I’ve had bad experiences with the
horror genre before? Yeah. I’ve had bad experiences with the horror
genre before. But let’s not dwell on it.
Edith mentions early on that her story is only one
that has ghosts in it; they aren’t the focus.
That nod to the audience is seriously
on the nose, but at least it’s an honest move. Anyone who wanted ghosts and horror and junk
will probably walk away disappointed (which wasn’t helped by the fact that the
terrible promos sold it as a non-stop scream-fest). But anyone who wants to see a more subdued
form of horror…well, they might want to look elsewhere, because Crimson Peak isn’t exactly the most
subtle movie around. Then again, that’s
part of what makes it so good.
I’m not going to pretend like there isn’t any horror in the movie, because there
is. See, one of the main wrinkles of the
story is that Carter looks into the Sharpe siblings’ past once Thomas starts
moving in on Edith. The investigation
leads to Carter getting killed -- and with such brutality that I could hardly
keep watching -- and Edith effectively runs into Thomas’ arms for support. She ends up marrying him and running off to
England to live with him and Lucille in their home, Allerdale Hall…which ends
up being an ill-advised movie, because it’s actually
the Crimson Peak her mother warned her about. Not like it matters, though. Having
seen Frozen for the first time semi-recently,
I’m still fighting the urge to call it Arendelle Hall -- but you know
what? They should have just called it
Bullshit Manor, because it’s so over-the-top evil, and I love it.
I mean, seriously.
The Sharpes have lost their family fortune thanks to the failure of
their mines and the squandering done by dear old dad. As a result, the mansion Thomas and Lucille
live in is in such a mess that even the shambles are in shambles. There’s at least one massive hole that
extends all the way to the roof, and lets the snow drift down to the
floor. The décor is so bleak and harsh
that it’s a wonder no one gets carved up just by looking around. There’s an infestation of moths, to the point
where they nearly cover every wall of a lower floor. Nightmarish howls are practically guaranteed
thanks to the wind, and rickety squeals might as well be a requirement for
every touchable surface.
That’s overlooking the main draw of Bullshit
Manor Allerdale Hall: it’s built upon the red clay that Thomas is looking
to harvest, and since the whole house is sinking, it leads to situations where
it looks like there’s blood all over the place.
Step on a floorboard? Red stuff
oozes all over. Need to take a
bath? Run the water until the clay stops
pouring out. Later on, Edith finds a
room that is pretty much the definition of pure evil; think of a fusion between
a dungeon, a prison, and a hot tub store, and you’re pretty much there.
This house only exists so that the movie can have
something to show off to people, and get under their skin. And you know what? I’m 100% okay with that. Unrealistic as it may seem, Allerdale Hall
works because it’s a natural extension of Crimson
Peak’s style. That style is blatant
as all get out, to be sure. But it’s
better to have an unmistakable style than no style; conscious decisions were
made every step of the way, all for the sake of creating something memorable --
something more substantial than a bunch of fleeting scares. The aesthetics, camera angles, and even the
colors used all serve the atmosphere.
(Especially the colors. As you
can guess, shades of red see a LOT of play here.)
Admittedly, I’m not much in the way of art or
interior design, so I’d recommend that those with a flair for aesthetics watch
the movie for Allerdale Hall itself.
Let’s get back to the main idea here: if Crimson Peak isn’t a straight-up, scare-your-pants-off horror
movie, then what is it? Pared down to
basics, it’s a cinematic take on a gothic novel; the first thing that came to
mind for me was Wuthering Heights
(though I’d bet there are better examples than that out there). Still, that’s a conclusion I came to later
on. Having been duped by the promos --
and rather uncharacteristically of me, avoiding reviews/info -- I went in
expecting a big dumb horror movie. Well,
maybe not to that extent; as a del Toro work, I assumed that I’d be taken for a
spin. Caught off-guard by a twist or
two.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I find out that
the ghosts are only incidental. Oh,
sure, they have their presence; they’re in the movie to point Edith toward the
truth, but they’re not even close to the threat or threatening. But what
surprised me more was that there’s also nothing particularly supernatural about
Crimson Peak. Ghosts aside, there’s no magic. There’s no ancient pact. There’s no malevolent force. Honestly, you could think of the
stupidly-spooky Allerdale Hall as the movie’s biggest red herring; despite the
movie’s looks, it’s a tale governed by humans.
Human interaction, human intent, human will, human foibles. I can appreciate that…buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut it
does feed into one of my biggest complaints.
Crimson Peak
is a slow burn. Watching it means,
in a sense, committing to an investment.
The ghostly scares evaporate well before Edith heads to England, and
aren’t even all that common to begin with.
Honestly, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the ghosts are a factor
based on the gaps of time that passes between one sighting and the next. Speaking personally, there were points in the
movie where I wondered “Okay, where are you going with this? What’s the endgame here?” I couldn’t see it, in a lot of
instances. So in that sense, you could
say that Crimson Peak loses track of
the plot at certain points -- like it’s building toward a finale or a major
point, but it’s hard to come by.
Plot threads run through the story, for sure. Scene after scene builds up the mystery of
the ghosts, and the mystery of the Sharpes, and Thomas being creepy, and
Lucille being creepy, and Alan playing the detective. But there’s not really a significant payoff
until later in the movie. Without the
threat of the ghosts, and without anything supernatural, there’s a disparity
between what Crimson Peak looks like,
and what Crimson Peak is actually
doing. It doesn’t want to be a horror
movie, and that’s fine -- but the tradeoff is that at several points, it felt
like it didn’t want to be anything. It
wanted to be formless, or at least play the long game so much that it became
formless.
It’s fine, though -- because man oh man, is there
one hell of a payoff.
Like I said, the central theme of the movie is
that the major players are all slaves to passion. They’re intelligent people, no question, but
they end up making bad decisions -- and acting on them, no less -- that lead to
things spinning out of control faster than The Flash on the turntables. It’s actually interesting to see these people
embrace their dark desires, and go to extremes to get what they want at the
cost of everything and everyone around them.
There’s a benign version of that theme early on
with Edith’s publishing woes. She wants
to be a writer, and goes after her dream -- as anyone should. But when the door gets slammed in her face,
she’s willing to go from writing out her manuscripts to typing them out; the
reason for that is so she can mask her feminine handwriting, and that gives her
a better shot by posing as a man. It
makes sense from a historical perspective (Crimson
Peak takes place in 1901, after all), but what’s important is that Edith is
willing to sacrifice a part of herself -- with a smile on her face, no less -- to
get what she wants. It sounds minor
enough, but she rides down that slippery slope with a greased-up sled.
What do I mean?
Well, when her father dies -- or gets murdered, more appropriately --
guess what she sacrifices? Her home, her
connections, her assets, and pretty much everything that makes her a
Cushing. All so she can become a Sharpe
instead. All for her brand new hubby.
Edith’s an interesting character, for sure. She’s not exactly one for direct combat,
barring one notable instance, but she makes up for it with a solid
character. The demands of the movie may
force her to be on the ropes or scared out of her wits for a good 75% of the
movie, but she’s still got enough of a personality to justify her presence as a
main character. She’s got spirit and
courage, and a little humor to her, but she’s also pretty concerned with
solving the mysteries of the movie.
Admittedly there were moments where it felt like they had to shoehorn in
how she’s such a strong female character who doesn’t play by society’s rules --
proof that she’s most unorthodox, for sure -- but
overall she’s an important part of the movie.
She still loses out to Thomas Sharpe, though,
because…well, he’s a real wildcard, that’s for sure. A huge chunk of the movie is devoted to
figuring out just who this guy is and what he’s about -- which leads to a lot of scenes where he’s talking with
Lucille about some vague plans he’s putting in motion. (There was a part of me that thought he
wanted to sacrifice Edith to ensure his continued immortality.) Really, though, I wonder if there’s that much
to reveal about him. There is plot-wise,
sure, but what matters more is that he establishes his character, and he
establishes his presence -- whether or not he does so as a charmer to the fair
Miss Cushing.
Like Edith, Thomas is a slave to his passion. His top priority is that he’s out to have his
machine built and the resources of his mine (and beyond, presumably)
harvested. To that end, he spends huge
swaths of time working on it, and the assumption is that he skips out on
sleeping alongside his new wife so he can tinker in the workshop or scrape up
new parts. The truth is just a little more complicated than that, but
the important thing is that he’s a man who won’t betray his passions -- even if
he can be pretty cold or unreasonable as a result. This is a guy who was offered up a huge sum
of money by Carter just so he would get the hell out of town, and then refused
so he could reunite with Edith. Guy’s
got moxie.
The big twist (such as it is, because the movie
has the subtlety of a screaming elephant) is that Thomas has been married
before, and Edith is actually his fourth wife.
It’s all a ploy to get his hands on wealthy girls’ money, and use it to
resurrect his home. It goes about as
well as anyone would expect, given that Edith is Girl #4 -- and Edith’s
protagonist powers not only make her immune to getting killed off-screen, but
also let her worm her way into Thomas’ heart.
So before movie’s end, Thomas’ dark passion involves more than just a
machine or his sinking nightmare house; we can argue day and night about how
real the relationship between him and Edith was, but by movie’s end it becomes
unquestionably real.
It’s too bad he spends a big slice of the movie
and the entirety of his backstory in an incestuous and (arguably) emotionally
abusive relationship with his older sister Lucille, and becomes an accomplice
to the murder of his previous three wives, Edith’s dad, and their inbred baby
because he just can’t quit her.
Yep. This sure
is a horror movie.
Remember when I said there’s one hell of a
payoff? There is, and it’s embodied by a
single character -- the movie’s best character
by a wide margin. Lucille Sharpe is the
MVP, even if I didn’t know it at the outset; given that she makes one of her
first appearances decked out in red and acts unreasonably creepy, I figured she
was a red herring. I thought that
despite it all, there was no way she could possibly be the movie’s villain --
the final boss, if you will. I vastly
underestimated Crimson Peak’s blunt
force trauma style. Much like her house
of bullshit, Lucille is over-the-top unnerving, and it’s amazing.
At first it seems like she’s weird and not all
there, but as time passes it’s clear that she plays by a very specific set of
rules that just so happen to be her
own. She’s cold and calculating, and
tries to restrain her emotions until the very end -- all for the sake of
accomplishing her goals. The core
objective, of course, is to make sure Thomas is with her and only her, so it’s
no small wonder that she tries to shuttle him towards winning over Edith and
screwing the Cushings out of their money.
Incidentally, she’s the one who murdered Carter via bashing his damn
skull in, and aims to take Edith out by poisoning her tea.
I’d say she’s one of those “just according to
keikaku” sort of characters, but there’s another comparison that comes to mind.
Okay, to be fair?
Lucille isn’t exactly riding atop a mosh pit of loyal goons and
ne’er-do-wells. But much like Ratigan,
it’s about putting on airs. The key
point of her character, I think, isn’t that she lacks emotion; it’s that she’s trying to restrain it -- or,
alternatively, she has too much of it.
She’s passionate about her brother, her home, and the life she
envisions. For the most part, she
doesn’t want anything to change, and she’s willing to sink into the depths of
the earth if it means one more blissful minute with Thomas.
It really says something about the character when,
despite shacking up with her beloved brother, Lucille doesn’t show a hint of
passion or emotion. It’s as if she’s
going through the motions -- or maybe she’s built up such a high tolerance to
her incest-filled relationship that she needs him to mash his body against hers
just to get to normal. So once Edith
steps into the picture, you could say there’s a deviation from the plan. This newcomer is interfering with their
lives, and her chance at passion; as unwelcome as that may be, it also forces
Lucille to redirect and reassert her passion.
It’s what leads to some of the movie’s most
chilling moments; if and when Lucille is being anything more than mysterious
and spooky, it’s…well, it’s a sign somebody screwed up big. In the best-case scenario, she’ll break
character and go into a shouting fit, slamming down food and violating personal
space. In the worst-case scenario? The comparison to Ratigan suddenly becomes a
lot more apt.
It hits the fan spectacularly once the truth is
revealed, and the confrontations are had.
Thomas ends up choosing Edith over Lucille, which makes the
already-unhinged lady of the house go wild -- and in a fit of rage, she stabs
her brother, including a grisly thrust into his face. (I cringed so hard that I practically merged
with the theater seat.) After that? Lucille drops all pretenses of being calm and
collected, and commits herself to one thing: killing Edith, no matter what it
takes. She fails, naturally, but she
still acts as a legitimate threat in the climactic chase throughout Allerdale
Hall. She’s disheveled, she’s screaming,
she’s armed with a knife -- and eventually a massive cleaver -- and if I didn’t
know any better, I’d say she activated a few cheat codes for boosted speed and
cloaking.
It’s still not enough, though. Edith manages to hold her off and try to
escape despite being debilitated by poison, but in the end it doesn’t come down
to a one-on-one fight to the finish.
Ultimately, it’s Lucille’s dark passion that does her in; just as the
Hall’s ghosts -- victims killed by the mistress’ precious poisons -- appeared
before Edith, one appears again to bring the struggle to an end. This time, though, it’s Thomas, silent and
ethereal. The sight of him leaves
Lucille still enough for a counterattack…so Edith goes for the kill and smashes
her head with a shovel.
And so the story wraps up with Edith leaving the
mansion behind with Alan, heading back home, and getting a book published. The name of the book? Crimson
Peak. Thus, the movie ends -- but I
still have some questions.
So the implication is that Edith turned her
experiences with the Sharpes into a book, which makes sense. Earlier in the movie, Thomas (as part of an
act to break off with her) ridiculed her for writing such sentimental drivel
when she hadn’t experienced anything worthwhile, love well among them. That’s obviously not a concern now, since she
was very much in love with Thomas, even after the reveal. So how much of her heart did she put into the
story? As an endeavor of passion in a
tale built around passion, did she give herself to her writing as a means to
feel her late husband’s warmth? As a way
to impart lessons to others? As a coping
mechanism for the trauma she endured? As
a means to find closure, and use the therapeutic process to gain answers she
couldn’t before? Or did she just think
it would make a good -- and bankable -- story?
I guess I can’t help but wonder what happens to
Edith now. Granted I have a lot more questions
in mind, but I wonder if she’ll still be a slave to her passion, or give up a
part of herself just to fulfill her desires.
She won’t rush into another marriage again, probably (though Alan’s
there to catch her on the rebound), but will she have really gained closure
with her book written? Will she become
tied to the past, just as Lucille did?
Will Thomas haunt her, in every sense of the word, even with an ocean
between them? Will she become a darker
version of herself because of the effect one earnest stranger had on her
life? What kind of messages has she
coded within the pages of her story? And
will that coding recast or even distort the truth?
With the movie over, I’ll probably never get a
solid answer. But I’m still asking those
questions. That has to count for
something -- and that’s why I’m putting Crimson
Peak somewhere around HERE on my SmartChart™:
And that’ll do it for now. See you next time.
Oh, and one more thing: this movie has Tom Hiddleston's bare ass in it. Like, right there, gyrating, and taking up a good third of the screen. So there's an incentive for anyone swooning for Loki.
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