BEFORE: I didn't even realize, when I was putting this chain together, that this was also a Guillermo Del Toro film. So it makes sense that he would use the same actors again and again, only he didn't - only Doug Jones carries over from "The Shape of Water" as a mo-cap actor, but that counts.
AFTER: It's ghosts a-plenty tonight as we follow the story of Edith, a young girl in 1887 Buffalo, NY, whose mother dies - and then comes back to visit her as a ghost, telling her to "beware of Crimson Peak". Which would have been very helpful, if she'd only explained what Crimson Peak was.
Fast-forward 14 years to 1901, when Edith is a young heiress who passes the time writing ghost stories - since she has some first-hand experience. She gets romanced by Sir Thomas Sharpe, who comes to town looking for investors for his new invention, basically a grain elevator re-modeled to help in the mining industry, especially with clay - because it's not commonly discussed now, but apparently it was a big problem back at the turn of the century, people had tons and tons of clay that all needed to be moved 10 feet to the right, and that was a huge undertaking. Edith's father refuses to invest in his new-fangled clay-moving machine, I think because of how many people with shovels and wheelbarrows that it would have put out of work. Even back then, people were worried about automation taking away their jobs, I guess.
Edith's father makes a deal with Sharpe and his sister, Lucille, which seems to involve them leaving town immediately, and if they do he won't share the information he has on them, which you just know has to be bad, right? But before they leave Edith's father has an accident, where he slips in the bathroom and hits his head on the sink four or five times, which basically caves in his skull. Geez, you hate to see accidents like that. More people should invest in those non-slip decals to cover their slippery bathroom surfaces.
This prompts Edith to marry Thomas, and move with him back to the U.K., where he and his sister live in Allerdale Hall, which somehow is even more haunted by ghosts than the place where Edith used to live, and is situated on top of (wouldn't cha know it...) a red clay mine. Ah, so that's why Thomas is so keen on inventing something that moves clay to somewhere else, he's just plain sick of looking at all of it 24/7. Even a short conveyor belt that moves it to another place 10 feet away would be a miracle invention to him, but it's no wonder he can't find any investors - I'm betting he's the only person in the world with this problem. It would be like me inventing a machine that alphabetizes my comic books and moves them to my storage space, that would be a big help to me but I doubt anyone else would be interested in such a machine.
Anyway, the red clay affects everything in the house, like it gets everywhere and even manages to make the running water look red, like blood red. Geez, that would be creepy if you didn't know that it was just clay. It is just clay, right? Before long, Edith gets messages from a whole new bunch of ghosts, which is kind of good news because I bet she was really sick of only talking to her mother's ghosts. It really was time for her to travel and expand her horizons, find out what some other ghosts have to say, that is when they're not ruining a game of fetch or sneaking around just outside one's field of vision. That's really quite rude, and so is crawling along the floor, leaving a blood trail, when they know full well that it's the servants' day off.
Oh, and about this time, Edith finds out that because of the way the red clay seeps up through the snow, the estate is commonly known as "Crimson Peak". Damn, now where did she hear that name before? Was that the place that her mother's ghost warned her about? Oh, well, I'm sure that's not important, it'll come to her in due time. Edith's very busy, trying to figure out why her husband won't consummate their marriage, and why she feels worse after every cup of Lucille's tea. Something just doesn't seem right here, maybe she just needs to stop and think about it, maybe over another cup of tea. Yes, so much tea to be consumed, that'll clear things up.
Maybe she wouldn't need to drink so much tea if there weren't a giant HOLE in the estate's roof, causing it to snow inside the house. That can't be good for anyone's health or demeanor, so I'm thinking maybe get someone to fix the roof? Just putting that out there. Fix the roof first, then maybe go to work on your little inventions and your automated tin toys. This leads me to a NITPICK POINT, regarding all of the moths and butterflies that are inexplicably all over the house - how do they possibly survive the cold air in a house where it snows indoors?
It's up to Edith's old boyfriend Alan to travel all the way from America and arrive JUST in time to set things straight at Crimson Peak. And then there's the most tired trope of all, Edith finally writes a successful novel, based on her experiences talking to the ghosts, both old and new. I just hate hate HATE when the movie I'm watching becomes somebody's novel (or worse, the screenplay for the movie I'm watching, ugh, can we please stop using this narrative crutch to end stories?).
Generally, this feels like somebody strung together a bunch of plot points that they'd seen in other horror movies, hoping that they'd all come together to form some new kind of coherent narrative, only they just don't ever seem to all congeal together. Maybe I missed something - because I did fall asleep about 30 minutes in, and that's a really bad sign for a horror film.
Also starring Mia Wasikowska (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Tom Hiddleston (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Jessica Chastain (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Charlie Hunnam (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Jim Beaver (last seen in "The Life of David Gale"), Burn Gorman (last seen in "Jimi: All Is by My Side"), Jonathan Hyde (last seen in "The Prince and the Pauper"), Bruce Gray (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Alec Stockwell (ditto), Emily Coutts, Brigitte Robinson, Leslie Hope (last seen in "Dragonfly"), Sofia Wells, Joanna Douglas, Bill Lake (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Javier Botet (last seen in "The Revenant").
RATING: 4 out of 10 land certificates
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