One star. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and gory violence
By Derrick Bang
When the mighty fall, they fall hard.
Steven Spielberg and 1941. Michael Cimino and Heaven’s Gate. George Lucas and Howard the Duck. Warren Beatty and Ishtar, Bruce Willis and Hudson Hawk, Kevin Costner and The Postman.
And now, Guillermo del Toro and Crimson Peak.
The deliciously moody
writer/director/producer’s career has proceeded smoothly along two parallel and
somewhat related paths: extravagantly baroque, comic book-style action sagas,
as with Pacific Rim and the two Hellboy entries; and splendidly eerie
chillers, as with Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone and his Academy
Award darling, Pan’s Labyrinth.
Even at their most outrageous —
and Pacific Rim really stretched the
credibility envelope — you could be certain of one thing: A Guillermo del Toro
film wasn’t boring.
Until now.
Crimson Peak isn’t merely boring. It’s
leaden, insufferably slow, wearily overblown, monotonous, humdrum and
butt-numbingly, makes-you-want-to-scream dull.
At best, it’s a 25-minute Twilight Zone episode s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d
into a plodding 119-minute trial by tedium. But even that comparison gives far
too much credit to the sluggish script by del Toro and Matthew Robbins, which
feels like an unholy love child spawned by Jane
Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Friday the 13th.
Yep. It’s that clumsy.
Star Mia Wasikowska has made a
career, of late, playing tortured young heroines in period and/or “heightened
reality” melodramas, from Madame Bovary
and Stoker to, yes, the title
character in Jane Eyre. I guess del
Toro figured that she was the perfect choice to play this film’s Jane
Austen-esque Edith Cushing, heroine of the director’s unabashed attempt to
re-create the classic Gothic romances of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
With ghosts thrown in, of course.
We are, after all, dealing with Guillermo del Toro.
And yes, Wasikowska certainly
looks the part of the naïve and overwhelmed young “spinster” at the heart of
this story, which echoes and even name-checks Austin, the Brontë sisters and
films such as Rebecca and Great Expectations. But although
production designer Tom Sanders and art director Brandt Gordon have a field day
with their meticulous re-creation of 1901 New York, and particularly the vast
gothic mansion in England’s remote hills, this is a classic case of being all
dressed up with nowhere to go.
Because the storyline is pathetic
in its stupidity, agape with glaring plot holes, and unable to remain
consistent even within its own ludicrous premise. This is a classic example of
the idiot plot, which is to say that the narrative lurches from one random
contrivance to the next, only because each and every character behaves like a
total idiot at all times.
To wit:
Edith, an aspiring author, lives
comfortably with her wealthy father, Sir Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), in
dawn-of-the-20th-century Buffalo, New York. She apparently has a “sense” for
seeing ghosts, and has grown up haunted by the impressively terrifying phantom
of her long-dead mother: an apparition which, more than once, has appeared to
issue a dire warning: “Beware of Crimson Peak.”
Okay, right away, we have to
wonder why the ghost of a loving mother would so terrify the daughter she
adored. Makes no sense. Never does, either, as things proceed. Just del Toro
and visual effects supervisor Dennis Berardi trying to get us to jump.
Edith has long been attracted to
her father’s doctor, the dashing Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), and he to
her, but their relationship has remained playfully distant, because — as
countless characters keep reminding her (and us) — this unworldly young woman
has no experience in matters of the heart. No surprise, then, that she’s swept
off her feet by the seductive Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a British visitor
hoping to broker a business deal with Sir Carter.
Handsome or not, there’s
something mildly sinister about Thomas ... and something decidedly unwholesome
about his sister and constant companion, Lucille (Jessica Chastain, who
overacts atrociously throughout the entire film). Clearly, these two share Big
Secrets ... and while the eventual “astonishing reveal” might have surprised
1940s moviegoers, it’s screamingly obvious in this post-Flowers in the Attic era. (Or Game
of Thrones. Pick your preferred pop-culture reference.)
But — sigh! — against the advice
of all concerned, Edith marries Thomas and follows him to England, and
crumbling Allerdale Hall, where he lives with Lucille and a small cadre of
servants. The latter, rather conveniently, always seem to vanish when things
turn weird.
Edith hasn’t been in the old
mansion but a day, when she’s beset by gloppy red specters that wave bony,
unnaturally long fingers in her direction.
To say nothing of the Impossible
Dog — a cute little terrier whatzit — that shouldn’t be present, even under
these aggressively bizarre circumstances (to explain why would be too much of a
spoiler), and which also pops in and out of the story, mostly at random.
Thomas’ long-held ambition has
been to invent a machine capable of dredging the massive deposit of blood-red
clay on which Allerdale Hall was built: a geological abnormality boasting clay
that can be shaped into bricks of superior quality. But lacking the means to
extract the stuff, Thomas and Lucille have watched, helplessly, as their home
has slowly sunk into the muddy red morass over the years.
This clay, incidentally, has
given Allerdale Hall its nickname: Crimson Peak. Cue gob-smacked exhalations of
breath by viewers, as Edith is shocked-shocked-shocked by this revelation. Goodness gracious! Crimson Peak! The
place her mother’s ghost warned her about! Oh, the horror!
In your dreams, Guillermo.
The major problem is that Edith,
despite the period authenticity that Wasikowska grants her, isn’t an admirable
heroine. Granted, she’s unworldly and unschooled in “the ways of love.” But
she’s not stupid, as is clearly depicted early on; she’s familiar with Arthur
Conan Doyle and his rational consulting detective, and she follows her father’s
business affairs to a degree.
Yet she behaves with jaw-dropping
foolishness once “trapped” within Allerdale Hall, and treats Thomas and Lucille
with trust and kindness, long past the point where anybody — and I mean anybody — would have recognized that
Something Is Amiss. And then, even after being confronted with the true evil at
work, Edith still behaves without a
lick of self-preservational common sense: as slow and obtuse as the cardboard
teenagers who get picked off in cheap horror flicks.
She simply doesn’t deserve our
respect or emotional investment. She’s unworthy, and several patrons at Tuesday
evening’s (free) preview screening demonstrated as much, by leaving in disgust
long before the film was over.
And Oh. My. Goodness. Speaking of
reaching “over,” this misbegotten nightmare drags through the longest third act
in recorded cinematic history, with del Toro milking every fresh ghost sighting
and heinous act long past the point the cow has gone dry.
He doesn’t even make good on
foreshadowed carnage, as with a basement vat of clay that contains ... something ... that (sigh) never amounts
to anything. Actually, del Toro telegraphs each impending “fright moment” so
blatantly, accompanied by a thundering crescendo in Fernanco Velázquez’s score,
that it’s impossible to be the slightest bit scared by anything.
No matter how ookie the
apparitions, they’re just overblown stuff ’n’ bother. We laugh at them. And not
kindly.
To acknowledge this film’s one
strong suit, del Toro does create a richly unsettling atmosphere of death and
decay. Allerdale Hall is an impressive backdrop, with its caved-in roof that
constantly permits drifting dead leaves and snowflakes to pile up in the entry
hall. The gloomy upstairs hallways and darkened rooms — all with massive ashen
moths beating their wings against the walls — are the quintessence of ghastly
uckiness.
That said, Thomas’ useless
clay-dredging machine looks and feels wholly out of place in a setting that
otherwise is straight out of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Bram Stoker or Edgar
Allan Poe. It’s as if del Toro impulsively decided to inject a bit of
steampunk, but for no reason; at the end of the day — once this cheerless film finally concludes — Thomas’ gadget has
served no purpose. It’s just there.
But I sure wish I hadn’t been.
Crimson Peak brands itself a dismal fiasco
from the very first scene: a brief glimpse of a dazed and bloodied Edith, who
then recounts her entire story in flashback. This is rarely a satisfying
narrative device, and — like so much of this film — utterly pointless.
Go
see Goosebumps instead.
2 comments:
Could not agree youth you more. ABSOLUTE FIASCO. Went out of the cinema bitterly disappointed.
This is not a subtle film. It's not even unpredictable. But it is an awful lot of ghoulish, melodramatic fun.
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