Crimson Peak (2015)

Sometimes it's easy to figure out why you don't like a movie. I often don't like lazy characterization or a lack of female characters. When I didn't like Black Mass last month, I didn't like it because the centre didn't hold. It didn't make sense to me that anyone -- anyone at all in that movie -- would be loyal to a guy like Jimmy. Despite excellent performances across the board, Johnny Depp wasn't as magnetic or as menacing as he needed to be to develop the kind of over-the-top loyalty that, say, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) displayed. And, if you can't buy that, what can you buy about the rest of the movie? (Benedict Cumberbatch making eggs, as it turns out).

But not liking Crimson Peak ... that's been a little harder to put my finger on. 

I didn't like Guillermo del Toro's last outing, either. Of course, I don't remember all the much about Pacific Rim or why I didn't like it. The only thing that really stands out to me two years on is that all the fight scenes took place at night in the rain, and I couldn't tell the aliens and the humans apart. We kept cutting back to the boring people (so boring) swooping their arms around in the Jaegers, and I was like, "My kingdom for a daylight fight!" 

My initial reaction was to label Crimson Peak as shallow. Everyone's motivations are on the surface, and it takes nanoseconds to figure out what's "really" going on (hint: exactly what you think). 

I started to compare it to The Woman in Black in my mind (a movie which starred Daniel Radcliffe's sad eyes and some shadows), and then I realized what I really didn't like about Crimson Peak: it's not a haunted house movie.

Bear with me because I know that sounds like a YP. BUT! The movie's called Crimson Peak and the ghosts are all like, "Beware of Crimson Peak", and Tom Hiddleston warns that the house "starts holding onto things... keeping them alive when they shouldn't be", so you'd think that the very place presents a clear and present danger. 

I am here to tell you: it does not. 

Sure, there are ghosts, but they aren't even malevolent ghosts. Despite being black or bloody skeletons whose clothes go up in evaporating wisps (make no mistake - this movie looks wicked cool), those ghosts are simply trying to save Mia Wasikowska from getting her silly self murdered. Which makes them Caspar's creepy cousins. 

So even though the house is -- and again this is visually stunning -- oozing blood from the walls, the house is actually just a house. Jessica Chastain is a crazy killer, and Tom Hiddleston is her somewhat unwilling accomplice, and there you go. Run away, Mia! Run away!

Here's what I imagined, though: that Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston were, in fact, centuries-old supernatural beings that are kept alive by ritually sacrificing young girls to their spooky demon house. But with the advent of, I don't know, modern detection, it's getting harder and harder to marry ladies, take them away, and kill them every couple of years. Jessica Chastain thinks they should just keep going, Louise, but Tom Hiddleston -- 'cause he actually likes Mia Wasikowska -- thinks they should just throw in the towel. Mia, however, has other plans (agency!). She's been having encounters with ghosts her entire life, and she is not about to leave these poor tormented souls trapped in this hell house. She's going to put them to rest!

Not to get all choose your own adventure (although they do, briefly, discuss choose your own adventure books), but that five minute treatment I just dreamed up is easily more entertaining that the movie I saw. 

Fun alternative: Hiddleston is so anemic looking in this movie that you can pretend he's still Adam from Only Lovers Left Alive and is mere seconds away from biting these ladies, then writing an opera about it.   

Dare to dream, self. Dare to dream.

UPDATE: I just realized that, like the story Edith is initially peddling, this isn't a ghost story, but a story that happens to have ghosts. Nicely done, del Toro, but also no.