There is nowhere else to go: Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror masterpiece Crimson Peak (trailer + poster)

(image via Hey U Guys)
(image via Hey U Guys)

 

SNAPSHOT
“Legendary Pictures’ Crimson Peak, a co-production with Universal Pictures, is a haunting gothic horror story directed by the master of dark fairy tales, Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy series, Pacific Rim), written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins and starring Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Hunnam. In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds…and remembers.” (official synopsis via Coming Soon)

A young woman (Wasikowska) is swept off by her feet by a charismatic suitor (Hiddleston) and taken back to his ancestral home. There she finds more than she bargained for, including a jealous sister (Chastain) and more than a few skeletons in the closet.” (additional synopsis details via Hey U Guys)

It is a rare thing indeed for me to feature a horror movie of any kind on this blog.

That is largely because I am a cowardly, easily-spooked, afraid-of-the-dark, build a pillow fort and hide behind it while peeking out every so often kinda guy and as you can well imagine horror movies, indeed horror via any medium you can name, does not sit well with me.

So I tend to avoid it like the plague, vengeful ghosts, freakishly aggressive zombies (oddly I am now at peace with The Walking Dead variety but let’s not push our luck shall we?) and sing-songy children skipping through long-deserted halls at three in the morning.

But, and I can’t quite explain this except to say I have a love of the morbidly melodramatic, gothic horror somehow seems to escape this all-encompassing hatred of horror, especially when it is forged by a storyteller as talented as one Guillermo del Toro who has just debuted the trailer and poster for his new impressively freaky movie Crimson Peak.

After watching a number of del Toro’s sublimely well-written, expertly directed scary films like El Orfanato (The Orphanage), Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth (one of my favourite films of all time), and even his less well-executed but no less frightening for that TV series The Strain, I have come to appreciate the way he masterfully and intelligently weaves exquisitely well-drawn characters, substantial narratives and terror that wells up from what the mind imagines rather than what is crudely put onscreen (a failure of a great many other filmmakers who go for the obvious rather than the suggested).

All of which means I am willing to watch his gothic horror films where I will quite happily pass by a multitude of others.

This doesn’t mean of course it will be a relaxing romp through the daisies, something del Toro, quoted on Screenrant is quite keen to make clear:

Crimson Peak is a much, much, much smaller movie, completely character-driven. It’s an adult movie, an R-rated movie, pretty adult.  Shockingly different from anything I’ve done in the English language. Normally, when I go to do a movie in America for the spectacle and younger audience, for Blade or whatever. This movie’s tone is scary and it’s the first time I get to do a movie more akin to what I do in the Spanish movies.”

And make clearer still.

“[Crimson Peak] has moments that are very visceral, physical violence.  You’re in this sort of sedate romance and then there is this brutal moment where you’re like, “Whoa!”  And it has a lot of kinky moments.  The only kinky moment I’ve ever shot is the leg f**k in The Devil’s Backbone. [laughs] This has a little more kinkiness than that.”

So it’s not for fainthearted then? No indeedy not it seems yet even so such is my faith in del Toro’s cinematic artistry that I am willing to go and see Crimson Peak.

In the daytime. In a well-lit cinema. With hundreds of people around me. (Will it look odd if I build a pillow fort in Row K, seat 14 do you think?)

Crimson Peak opens in Australia on 15 October 2015 and in USA and UK on 16 October. 

 

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