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Listen to this articleWhen her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak.
From the imagination of director GUILLERMO DEL TORO comes a gothic romance starring MIA WASIKOWSKA (Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre), two-time Academy Award® nominee JESSICA CHASTAIN (Zero Dark Thirty, Mama), TOM HIDDLESTON (The Avengers, Thor series) and CHARLIE HUNNAM (Pacific Rim, FX’s Sons of Anarchy). In Crimson Peak, they will discover the power that love has to make monsters of us all.
As the writer and director of such modern classics as The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth and the producer of such terrifying thrillers as The Orphanage and Mama, del Toro delivers a unique blend of psychological terror and operatic beauty that has propelled horror into the elevated realm of dark fairytales.
With his new film, this powerful force of imagination makes a grand return to the genre he helped define. Here, del Toro creates an elevated romance with a level of cinematic artistry that harkens back to the genre’s greatest triumphs, whi le delivering spectacular visuals, rich characters, emotive performances, and a story that grips you to the bitter end.
Set in the year 1901, Crimson Peak is given a stylized, contemporary gothic feel through del Toro’s mesmeric visual style. Audiences will be swept away to a terrifying destination like no other, where the snow bleeds red and every corner hides a phantom that will linger in the mind long after the film is over.
More akin to the writer/director’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001), a spine-chilling, period love story veiled in horror, and the triple-Oscar®-winning Spanish language masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), his new film explores the haunting theme that love is indeed a tender trap. Just as the events of his latter production could be questioned by audiences as the product of a young girl’s limitless fantasy, Crimson Peak plays with our perceptions of what is truth and what is fiction. As Edith is a burgeoning writer with a vivid imagination, could the terrifying events all be springing forth from her mind?
Crimson Peak is in step with the explorations of del Toro’s acclaimed Spanish-language productions, ones that gained the Mexican filmmaker international recognition. To that end, producer Callum Greene— who last partnered with del Toro on Pacific Rim—aptly refers to his new work as del Toro’s “first English language Spanish film.”
Reflecting upon this project’s influences, del Toro shares: “Crimson Peak is the ghost-story equivalent of Pan’s Labyrinth. It has the combination of several genres, and the fact that we are packing the punch of a traditional ghost story with the class and beauty of a classic.” He readily admits that his interpretation of the genre broods on the spirituality of human beings.
“The elements for successful horror films often come hand-in-hand with a religious set of beliefs. They deal with the supernatural in a particular religious way: demons, damnation, hell.”
As they crafted their screenplay, del Toro and fellow screenwriter Matthew Robbins drew inspiration from such deeply cherished novels as Jane Austen’s “Wuthering Heights,” Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Anya Seton’s “Dragonwyck,” all of which conceal horror in their spines. Del Toro reflects: “In a gothic romance you get a great love story, you get supernatural elements, you get really spooky scenes…all those things combined make a beautiful, gorgeous-looking movie.”
For del Toro, material exploring this genre can have ghosts and crumbling castles and “it can have the trappings of a horror film” but intricately seeded is a classical love story in which a central “virginal character who is discovering a secret, a treasure, a dark past…emerges somewhat transformed.” And in spite of the dark turns the love story takes, the budding romance between Thomas and Edith has a lyrical quality. Still, if love is a form of madness, all of the key players in their story fall victim to it.
Crimson Peak is, according to del Toro, “the darkest of fairytales,” and the classic recipe includes a character on a journey to adulthood.
“You can find it in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or in ‘The Snow Queen,’ in works by Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Andersen,” he says. The story involves finding independence; the rite of passage takes the character on a “journey through darkness… through geographical space, across the oceans, into the underworld.”
What attracts del Toro to bring terror into his work is “using ghosts to eliminate human antidotes, to illuminate the story in a human way.” He took the classic gothic romance and infused it further with his imaginative approach by building a unique haunted mansion that became the mortar of the mystery. Here, fear lives within the walls.
This mixture of psychological and physical horror greatly appealed to Legendary, with whom del Toro has had a relationship since early discussions on Pacific Rim. The studio felt his latest work would dovetail with its and death during this time, and not only is Edith a curious student of both worlds, she is actively being pulled between them.
