Crimson Peak

This film was phenomenal and one of the best Horror Dramas I've ever seen. It's up there with The Sixth Sense. It was shot flawlessly and the story was complex yet the directorial style had a delightful simplicity to it. The narrative was cohesive even in its symbolic moments and subtext.

I know some don't consider it Horror, but this film had everything. The cinematography was beautiful, the acting heartfelt, and the pacing was most significant. If you don't like slow films, I don't see how you can appreciate the genius of something like Alien or The Exorcist, and so this film may not be for you.


Anyhow... the director of this film seems to be Guillermo Del Toro's protege of sorts, and Del Toro himself produced this. I find it interesting that this is a case of the protege actually being a better director than the mentor. The Devil's Backbone is the only Del Toro film paced as well as this, with as plain yet impressive a visual style. After seeing at least half of Del Toro's films, I can never comprehend the frustrating awkwardness of his narrative style. His stories feel unbalanced from start to finish in their contents and the way that they usually flow and unfold. Crimson Peak is a good example of a film that had everything great going for it, and yet it turned out extremely underwhelming and awkward for a couple of reasons. I feel like, had the director of The Orphanage directed it instead, it could have been the film we all thought it would be.

In a perfect world, the writer of The Orphanage could have revised Del Toro's script for it as well. In that way, the three men would have collaborated on Crimson Peak the same way they did for The Orphanage, with Del Toro as producer, and the other two as writer and director. As it currently stands, however, the film was a missed opportunity, and The Orphanage still stands as a precise example of what a fantastic Mystery Suspense-Horror should be.





I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way