Crimson Peak

Crimson Peak isn't the typical haunted-house film the commercials are advertising. In fact, this film owes more of a debt to Jane Eyre than The Conjuring, though there are plenty of tense, scary moments that occur during the film's story.

Dramatically and even morally, however, Crimson Peak feels like a 1946 film made seven decades later; the conventions are all carried over intact from an earlier time, so that only the technical aspects and gore level identify it as a product of its own era.

And his visionary style is again readily apparent in Crimson Peak, a ghost story in which superior camerawork, costumes and production design work together to put the audience in a trance. 

Even the pristine white snow bleeds bright scarlet in Crimson Peak, the malformed love child between a richly atmospheric gothic romance and an overripe Italian giallo - delivered into this world by the mad doctor himself, horror maestro Guillermo del Toro, operating at his most stylistically unhinged.

Crimson Peak is a fascinating conundrum of a movie. I was close to hating it as I walked out of the theater, but images and moments from it have stayed with me.

A deliciously overripe celebration of gothic romance, with a game cast led by Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain.

Del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen (who worked together on 1997's Mimic) are clearly having a blast painting every corner of their creepy crimson canvas. But as sumptuous as Crimson Peak looks and as sinister as Hiddleston and Chastain are, you never get transported to the bone-chilling places that a great ghost story should take you. 

Crimson Peak is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Notorious in more ways than one (although "Rebecca" is also a clear influence).