Crimson Peak (2015)
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastian, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Burn Gorman, Doug Jones
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Rating: 
From its trailer, Crimson Peak looked so much my bag I was almost reluctant to go and see it in case it disappointed. I needn't have worried. Guillermo del Toro'’s lush, Roger Corman-esque gothic fantasy is a delightful epic of death-tinged excess - think vintage Tim Burton but without the kitschy '50s overtones.
Lovely, porcelain-skinned American heiress Edith Cushing (go-to goth girl Mia Wasikowska) is a bit of a bluestocking (you can tell this because she sometimes wears glasses), far more concerned with books than balls and beaus. But when she encounters the deliciously Dorian Gray-like Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddlestone) palely loitering in her father's offices, she's instantly swept off her feet. And when her father dies suddenly (from a mysterious blow to the head, delivered Taggart-style by an anonymous, black-gloved assassin), there seems little option for her but to fall into his arms. Together with Tom's super-spooky sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain, channelling Morticia Addams) the newly-weds retreat to the family pile, Allerton House, a godforsaken crumbling pile in Cumberland that makes Eel Marsh House look like a des res.
What happens next is small surprise to anyone who's ever read any Edgar Allan Poe (or indeed seen a Roger Corman film). But you don't watch Crimson Peak for its plot, any more than you cast Charlie Hunnam for his acting ability (he plays Edith's devoted childhood friend, Lord love him). No, you watch Crimson Peak for its sublimely sumptuous production design; its ludicrously exaggerated Victorian frocks, engulfing the women in shrouds of diaphanous silk and smothering velvet; the swooningly romantic strings of the soundtrack; the really quite horrific monsters lurking in the shadows and the sheer, unbridled OTT Rocky Horror Show joy of Allerton House.
For, despite sterling scenery-chewing from all involved, the Haunted House is the real star of the film, gaping holes in its rafters letting in a constant swirl of brittle leaves and winter snow; its wattle and daubed walls, infested with huge black moths, gaping like the ribs of a skeleton; and the scarlet clay on which it’s built and which gives it its sinister nickname seeping up through the cellar and into the very plasterwork, as if the house itself has been physically wounded by the terrible things that have taken place within its bleeding walls.
So far so Hammer House of Horror. Yet the odd nod aside (you've got to love the fact that Edith's surname is Cushing), Crimson Peak takes itself surprisingly seriously, and it's to the credit of the cast that, even in its most fraught, ridiculous moments, there is absolutely nothing funny in this torrid tale of monstrous love and murder.
So a bandon hope of humour or, er, not guessing the plot twists within minutes, and instead revel in this gorgeous, gory Grand Guignol guilty pleasure.