In 2013, writer/director Guillermo del Toro went big with “Pacific Rim,” receiving a rare opportunity to make his own mega monster movie with an appropriately gigantic budget and global scale. For his latest, “Crimson Peak,” the helmer goes relatively small, setting the majority of the picture inside a crumbling mansion populated with only a few characters.Download Crimson Peak movie hq, Out to create his own version of a gothic Italian chiller from the 1960s, del Toro has all the right dramatic ingredients and pure technical mastery, but the story is lacking serious threat, often caught admiring itself instead of marching forward as a proper spine-tingler.A young woman with dreams of becoming a writer in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith (a miscast Mia Wasikowska) is stopped in her tracks when ambitious stranger Thomas (Tom Hiddleston) arrives from England. In need of financing to keep his clay mine operating with new technology, Thomas is shut down by Edith’s father, Carter (Jim Beaver), but he remains fixated on the daughter. When Carter dies, Edith is left with a small fortune and a new husband in Thomas, who brings her back to a remote estate in England to live with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain).
However, Edith has a connection to the ghost realm, and the spirits inside the house are determined to communicate something to the new wife, urging her to research Thomas’s history. Following Edith to protect her from harm, rejected suitor Dr. Alan (Charlie Hunnam) begins an arduous journey to the manor, hoping to prevent his love from becoming another victim.To embrace “Crimson Peak,” one must lower expectations for excitement. The helmer isn’t out to build a thrill ride with the picture. Instead, he plays it almost perfectly calm, treating the effort as more of a period piece than a horror film.Download Crimson Peak movie DVD CAM, Characterizations are slowly built with seductive encounters and extended displays of curiosity, setting up the triangle of Edith, Thomas, and Lucille as the screenplay works through ghostly encounters and gruesome acts of murder. “Crimson Peak” would like to be considered as something of a mystery, but most audiences will be well ahead of what del Toro and co-writer Matthew Robbins are cooking up here, leaving the most effective moments charged with an uncomfortable sexuality, finding the golden virgin Edith encountering a dream man in Thomas, only to have their heat cooled by Lucille, who’s invasive manner prevents the new wife from fully taking in her new, decaying surroundings.Never an ideal storyteller, del Toro is more valued for his visual instinct, and “Crimson Peak” is flat-out gorgeous.
Chewing on pieces of Bava and Argento, the helmer builds a playground of the damned with Thomas’s manor, which offers a constant interior sprinkling of snowfall due to a damaged roof, also housing sanctuaries for butterflies, delivering a proper haunted house environment for Edith to get lost in. Sets are extraordinary and lived-in, while costuming by Kate Hawley is lavish, bursting with colors and layers, providing the actors with an immediate history. “Crimson Peak” is also ripe with genre touches, leading with shadowy encounters that establish the house as a prison for all involved. When del Toro rears back and lets loose with his creation, the effort lurches to life,Download Crimson Peak movie all quality, suddenly enjoying itself as blood is spilled and hope is lost, extracting terrific performances from Chastain and Hiddleston, who commit to the operatic extremes of the material. “Crimson Peak” is all crushed velvet and open wounds, but there’s little momentum to the picture, which is frequently caught spinning its wheels through banal encounters and discussions of the clay mining industry, and it makes a critical error with Edith, who’s introduced as a potential lioness and ends up a quivering kitten. The production also missteps with CG-animated ghosts, filling a lovingly practical production with plastic horrors, diluting the fear factor of the movie.
The helmer has his tributes and his inspirations, along with his own macabre interests, but del Toro is almost the feature’s worst enemy, spending so much time reveling in the particulars of his creation, he misses a chance to strengthen its level of peril. “Crimson Peak” is pure eye candy, and the climax finally shakes off lethargy to spotlight gruesome violence and chases around the location. However, such ideal escalation comes a little too late, making “Crimson Peak” feel more like a missed opportunity than a gloriously sustained celebration and replication of del Toro’s filmgoing education.Download Crimson Peak movie in DVD, There’s nothing worse than going into a weekend disappointed, but I fear I must disappoint you my Dear Reader by robbing you of your excitement and anticipation for Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak. Rest assured no one feels the anguish of an underwhelming film more than me, but the visionary director’s latest entry just fails to capture the majesty of some of his earlier works.I’ve been criticized by film-loving friends and foes alike as having set astronomically high standards for the movies I watch, and I suppose this is a case where I expected another Pan’s Labyrinth but left the theater feeling like I had just watched David Bowie’s Labyrinth. My high expectations would also explain me being terminally single and my general social awkwardness (I’d suspect).
But don’t you fret horror-lovers; what Crimson Peak lacks in terror, story and pretty much every other important component, it more than makes up for with style and setting. That’s not to say it’s a ‘bad’ movie or flat out ‘unworthy’ of your precious cinema time, but you’ll discover for yourself that the beautiful trailer we all salivated over time and time again hid its own notorious secret – it was basically the entire movie.With the very first shot, we’re introduced to a bloodied, knife-wielding Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) looking frail and vulnerable against a snowy landscape stained crimson from an unknown source.Download Crimson Peak Movie HD, We’re treated to a quick flashback where Edith is visited by the ghost of her then-recently-deceased mother who warns the frightened child to ‘beware Crimson Peak.’ The stage is quickly set that “ghosts are real” and that she is one of the unfortunate few who can see them.From there we enter the elegance and grace of a Victorian-era America and are reintroduced to a bookish Edith armed with her attempt at a ghost-story manuscript instead of a knife. Thanks to some expository dialogue we learn Edith is the heiress to her father’s (Jim Beaver) sizeable fortune though she is quickly swept off her feet by the well-dressed mystery man Thomas Sharpe – much to the ire of Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), Edith’s admirer. After successfully wooing Edith, the two return to Thomas’ native England to live in the family home with his equally mysterious sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).
Enter Allerdale Hall AKA the Sharpe Family home and arguably the best character in the film. When Edith and Thomas arrive, the house is noticeably in ruin but still manages to cast a domineering shadow across the barren lands that make up the Sharpe Estate. While Thomas tinkers in his laboratory on mining gizmos, Edith’s worlds-apart isolation is compounded by the ghostly intimidation of her sister-in-law Lucille.Remember the crimson staining the snow from the first scene? Yeah – it’s unfortunately just red clay.Download Crimson Peak Movie On DVD, The kind of rarity that once made the Sharpe family exceedingly rich, but now threatens to engulf the penniless brother and sister and the virginal new bride in their dilapidated mansion. Despite warnings that there are unsafe sections of the house, Edith begins exploring and inadvertently unravels the ghastly past of Allerdale Hall. Queue the ghosts and a few well placed ‘thrills’ and that’s the movie, albeit with an overly predictable narrative riddled with uninspiring dialogue and more expository monologues.I should have known I was in for disappointment when Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline did not have the film-inspired Crimson Peak Ale in stock, but once you enter the world of Crimson Peak, there’s no turning back I suppose. It’s certainly a film to keep your attention during its 119-minute runtime, but there’s little – if anything – I can say in praise that isn’t referencing Guillermo del Toro’s style of filmmaking. My heroic cinema companions can attest to the fact that the only words I could muster post-viewing were “well it certainly looked pretty.”
It’s a film rich in atmosphere and little else. Much in the spirit of his earlier works like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro envisions a world of gothic horror that harkens back to the days of German Expressionism. Once we leave the vibrancy of Victorian America, the film is awash in shadow and stark contrast. Unfortunately, it’s a visceral storytelling experience without a compelling story.Regrettably, the first film that came to mind for me while watching Crimson Peak was the 2003 flop Cold Creek Manor. Don’t worry if this one stayed under your radar as is was the most underwhelming horror film I think I’ve ever seen.Watch Crimson Peak Online, I only bring it up because it had a similar scare-level to Crimson Peak (or lack thereof) and featured more or less the same story.Some would argue that Crimson Peak isn’t a horror at all but rather a romance with horror elements in it, and I’d tend to agree. It’s very superficial by all accounts, and aside from a few predictable jump scares, it leaves you wanting for nearly everything.The casting of the film is tough to criticize because none of the characters are particularly deep though I can say with some assurance that the film definitely lacked a del Toro favorite – Ron Perlman. It was nice to see Charlie Hunnam and Burn Gorman sneak in thanks to their work on del Toro’s Pacific Rim, but I want a goddamned foul-mouthed, gold-toed-shoes-wearing, antihero to just randomly show up in a film about ghosts and ghouls. It couldn’t have made the movie any worse Guillermo…
But in all seriousness the cast was…there. Mia Wasikowska exuded the vulnerable Mary Shelley-type character but failed to win me over as the heroine. Tom Hiddleston was well-spoken but easily forgettable. Charlie Hunnam did NOT take off his shirt this time. And Jessica Chastain…well it’s tough to say. I’ve never been particularly fond of her as an actress, and indeed that’s true of her performance in the first half of the movie. That being said – she really does start to shine toward the end. After you see her in the last 20 minutes or so you’ll definitely agree that her talents as a maniacal Baroness are criminally wasted.Download Crimson Peak Movie, Also – the fuck? I can’t in-good-faith label Crimson Peak as a failure because del Toro films merit a unique set of standards. Guillermo is a director that has a masterful gift of translating his visions onscreen, and that’s exactly what he’s done with his venture into mainstream gothic horror. He frames his shots in truly mesmerizing and passionate ways while still capturing all the unnecessarily-rich detail of his sets. This is a film for ardent lovers of the spectacle of film and specifically that of horror, not for anyone else.
