The most pressing threat in Guillermo del Toro's gothic horror Crimson Peak isn't the ooze-filled cauldrons of dead souls in the basement of the old Victorian mansion, nor the plotting, black-clad sister (Jessica Chastain), who serves a bitterly poisonous tea.
It's the ever-lurking possibility that, at any moment, the lush, ornate tapestry of del Toro's film might swallow its performers whole.
It would be a grand death.
Crimson Peak is so lovingly wrapped in the stylish trappings of the genre that it's one of the few movies you could say is worth it purely for the wallpaper.
It stars Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Chastain -- a fine trio of actors. But the film's true above-the-title artists are more properly cinematographer Dan Laustsen, production designer Thomas Sanders and costume designer Kate Hawley, who under the lordly command of del Toro, summon an atmosphere gaga with all things gothic.
Crimson Peak casts a spell that fails to quite hold, but it's unquestionably the work of a man who loves -- I mean, really loves -- movies.
It opens with a flashback and a promise from Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) that "ghosts are real." After the death of her mother, she (or at least a ghoulish ghost of her) visits Edith with a frightful warning: "Beware of Crimson Peak." It's a message that curiously fails to impress.
From England, Thomas Sharpe (the splendid Hiddleston) comes to Buffalo with his mysterious sister Lucille (Chastain), in search of a grant for a contraption of his invention to mine the red clay beneath their home. Edith's father, Carter Cushing (an excellent Jim Beaver), quickly rejects Thomas, but Edith doesn't.
The Sharpes have clearly duplicitous motives, but Edith swoons for Thomas.
Edith and Thomas wed and the trio returns to the remote Sharpe family manor in England, Allerdale Hall. There, the movie moves into its more sedate house-of- horrors second half with a Notorious-like plot, in which Edith is slowly poisoned while unearthing the Sharpe family secrets.
The rich atmosphere of Crimson Peak never wanes, but the story does. Still, there may be no better conjurer of color in movies right now than del Toro. His dreams, and nightmares, are in technicolor.
Crimson Peak (B)
B Directed by Guillermo del Toro. R (bloody violence, some sexual content and brief strong language). 118 mins. In wide release.
