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.
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| Even after the already strange Lucille (Jessica Chastain, left) starts behaving in a clearly menacing manner, Edith (Mia Wasikowska) remains blandly complacent, like a lamb awaiting slaughter. Obviously, this young woman was absent when common sense was handed out! |
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.
