Tom Hiddleston Wants to Believe in Ghosts

Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak is a very deliberate return to an old-school type of horror story – the Gothic fiction, or romance, genre. Mia Wasikowska plays Edith Cushing, a bright and curious young American woman attempting to get her beloved ghost story published when she meets mysterious English stranger Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his icy sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). Though a move would mean leaving behind her father (Jim Beaver) and childhood acquaintance Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), she can’t help but feel swayed by the fact she would be leaving behind the ghost of her dead mother, who has tormented her since childhood.

Every so often, I think about how much I’d love a good gothic Victorian horror film, one that gets it all right: the damp darkness, the crumbling mansions, the whispery ghosts with bonnets, the never-ending cups of tea, the echo of an ancient piano in an empty foyer. This is Edith’s mom, recently deceased and now a computer-generated specter that is more spooky than outright scary. Wasikowska does the same with Edith’s combination of naivete and grit, and Chastain fully inhabits her place as the sinister lady of the house. Allerdale proves to be a haunted mansion to end them all, with pipes that cough red water and a ceiling so rotted that snow piles up on the floor. And while it may not be Del Toro’s best film to date, it is a truly satisfying and impeccably put together work of art.

Crimson Peak also suffers from a terribly inconsistent tone – it’s not sure whether it wants to be a love story, a gruesome haunted house film or a PG-rated children’s romp (which it would be if it was toned down a bit).

So it’s only fair that we highlight her wonderful emerald gown at last night’s New York City premiere of “Crimson Peak”. Sadly, it’s hard to believe Crimson Peak and the masterful Pan’s Labyrinth shared a director. But the rather ordinary violence in the film’s bloody, blade-slashing, head-bashing fights mostly lack imagination. It later visits her again, when aspiring to be more Mary Shelley than the spinster Jane Austen, she instantly falls for the charming but penniless aristocrat Baronet Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston). “It makes things easier”, to which Edith replies “But I don’t like closing mine”, clearly indicating that they are a mismatched couple. Del Toro, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with frequent collaborator Matthew Robbins, plays joyfully with color, namely the bold reds of the film’s title. On first meeting him, I stuck out my hand, and he grabbed me into a big bear hug.

That said, viewers who are used to a faster, more modern type of horror/thrill experience might have trouble engaging with the film. The spirits are merely metaphors for the past, she says, multiple times, making clear what the film we’re watching really isn’t.