Harefooted Halloween: Crimson Peak

What I Liked: The set and costume design are spectacular.  In terms of sets it’s all about the crazy house the filmmakers came up with.  It’s like a small scale version of the one in The Haunting with gothic as shit architecture, a labyrinthine layout and lots of different colors and textures.  The 1800’s style is exaggerated to hell and also made to look hellish.  I actually like this house better because it’s less sprawling and feels more intimate.

They went only slightly exaggerated for the outfits and that was an excellent choice because it ups the creep factor in a more subtle way.  Some of those shoulder pads go a little too fuckin’ far though.

The cinematography in general is fine but the lighting is a little too uneven in my opinion.  I get that they wanted some contrast by having the house stuff dark and shadowy and the non-house scenes lighter, but I think the filmmakers overcompensated and had the non-house stuff overly bright and shiny.  The house shit is outstanding though with vibrant deep colors.

What I Didn’t Like: The script is pretty bad.  It’s not only a very typical ghost story but our leading lady (Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland (2010)) is a proud graduate of Dumb Fuck University.  It’s baffling how she could fall for and trust such an obvious bad guy and think his incredibly eerie house is an ok place to live.  I have no sympathy for this character because they set her up as an intelligent independent woman who then suddenly can’t put two and two together.  It’s lazy writing to seemingly have your hero be strong but then force them to make bonehead moves so you can have certain scary scenes.

Overall Impressions: This one is way too damn predictable.  After the first ten or fifteen minutes I successfully guessed everything that eventually happened in the rest of the movie.  There’s almost no creativity with the elements of the story or how it’s told.  All the revelations and plot twists become “yeah, no shit” moments and that made it sorta tedious to sit through.

I’m not sure what Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) was getting at with this.  I wanna say he wasn’t totally satisfied with Mama (which he produced) and thought he could do that particular ghost better in his own movie, while also taking huge influence from The Haunting and The Shining.  But apparently the script had been kicking around since 2006 so there goes that theory.

I dunno, everyone calls del Toro a visionary but the only film of his that I liked and thought was original so far was Pan’s Labyrinth, which makes me think it was a fluke.  I wanna keep giving him more chances but it’s getting harder.

Crimson Peak comes off really stale.  Sure it’s pretty as shit to look at but there needs to be a decent story there too.  Alright, it has one of the nastiest head smashing scenes ever but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing.  I was afraid to put that comment in the “What I Liked” section because I didn’t want you all to think I was some sorta weirdo that enthusiastically praises graphic bludgeoning.  But del Toro at least made me feel something with that scene which…oh and there’s that really horrible shovel blow to the head.  Ok, there were two things in here that made me feel an emotion, right or wrong, but that isn’t a great track record for this piece.  Better luck next time.