Crimson Peak (2015)

The film initially did not play out as a horror flick; it appeared to me early on (if I had no idea of the plot) that this was a love story. Tom Hiddleston’s Thomas Sharpe and Mia Wasikowska’s Edith Cushing immediately pulled the audience into a story of love and the trials and tribulations that come with love. From Cushing’s father not being accepting of the relationship to the oddities that came along with Sharpe’s family, the audience was immediately immersed in a story that appeared to be like one we’ve seen hundreds of times. With the exception of the ghosts and other spirits that make appearances throughout the film, the film was simply one of a demented family who had someone marry in for the sole purpose of gain (regardless of of how deranged that gain was). I believe that Guillermo del Toro would have written the film in this manner on purpose in order to keep the audience engaged. This film is, in many ways a combination of two types of films that people typically gravitate to: love-story and horror. These two are laced together in a way that I have never seen before. One could have eliminated the portions of the film from either genre and would have still been left with a full film of the other genre (however, the love story would have been quite psychotic). I thought that del Toro did an incredible job with his use of symbolism throughout the course of the film. My favorite use was that of the clay that surrounded the house. As the audience learns by the end of the film, the house is quite interesting and full of horrific history; the bright red clay was a perfect foreshadowing of what was to come. Moreover, del Toro did a phenomenal job of slowly unveiling information pertinent to the story; it wasn’t too fast and it certainly wasn’t too slow. I found it incredibly difficult, early on, to picture Tom HIddleston as anything other than Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His performance as that character will most likely follow him wherever he goes for the remainder of her career and I felt that this was true of this film. Hiddleston is, however, a fantastic actor and was able to, only briefly into the film, able to convince me of his character. I thought the acting, as a whole, was good. Each and every one of the actors did a great job of portraying their respective characters and, considering how fantastical and unusual this film is, making the audience believe everything that was happening. The end of the film was full of blood and gore, however, it did not seem that the gore was over-the-top. While it was incredibly gross (if you’re not a fan of blood), it fit well with what was taking place at the end. I feel that, as a whole, this was one of the more well put together horror films that I have ever seen. The story, the acting, the symbolism and just about everything else that was put into this film was done in phenomenal fashion. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2554274/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1