Scream Stream: How Guillermo del Toro’s tenderness for all things monstrous and ghostly shone through in Crimson Peak

There seem to be very few filmmakers who have embraced the beauty and allure of all things monstrous and unearthly like Guillermo del Toro has. The filmmaker’s filmography is dotted with a plethora of films centred around the fantasy genre, which include his acclaimed works such as Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017). Among the works that gained him praise and accolades, including two Academy Awards, lies 2015’s Crimson Peak.

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain and Charlie Hunnam, Crimson Peak failed to strike a chord with audiences and horror story afficianadoes, like some of Del Toro’s other works have. Cinema goers seemed to display a lukewarm reception of the gothic tale, which led the film to perform poorly at the box office as well. But despite the less than stellar reaction horror fans might’ve displayed, Crimson Peak is undoubtedly a prime example of the director’s soft spot for the supernatural and other worldly.

Like most of Del Toro’s works, Crimson Peak lets the viewers into the rich and awe inspiring world of Del Toro’s imagination with its stunning visuals, in all its gothic glory. The film tells the tale of young American heiress Edith Cushing, who falls in love with a mysterious English gentleman named Thomas, who arrives in America with his sister Lucille, in search of investors for his mining invention. Edith and Thomas’ whirlwind romance soon leads to marriage, after the tragic murder of Edith’s father, making her the heir to a wealthy empire.

After she makes her way to her husband’s run down mansion, Crimson Peak, she is plagued by strange phenomena. Ghosts and spirits haunt her dreams, ominously leading her to strange hidden relics Edith can make no sense of. Adding to her woes is the fact that Lucille barely seems to leave the couple alone, which Thomas barely seems to notice, and that Edith’s health worsens as the days go by as the mansion she calls home gets more and more crimson.

As always, Del Toro seemed to have spared no expense when it came to his monsters, with the ghosts that haunt Crimson Peak being depicted in all their ethereal and unsettling glory. Where most horror filmmakers use ghosts as manifestations of the most violent and malevolent parts of the waking world, Del Toro is more gentle with his spectres, as is evident in Crimson Peak.

Edith’s first ever encounter with the spirit world comes in her childhood, when she is visited by the ghost of her deceased mother and left with an ominous warning about Crimson Peak, the significance of which the young lady discovers far too late. Her later run-ins with the souls that haunt her husband’s home are equally frightening, being chased around the decrepit mansion in the dead of night. But as she slowly unravels the dreaded secrets that her husband and sister in law have been keeping from her, Edith comes to the stunning realisation that the ghosts she mistook for being malevolent were in fact looking out for her.

With the living beings in the story being much callous and vicious, against the sombre kindness displayed by the spirits, Del Toro seems to try and sand off the veneer that people are supposed to preposses humanity just by virtue of their existence on the mortal plane. While the man Edith considered to be the love of her life was plotting to use her for his selfish gains, despite his last redeeming act, the spirits she was so deathly afraid of gently guided her to uncovering his betrayals. Despite having no connection to her before, the lost souls try their best to make sure that the young woman does not suffer their own fate- being doomed to haunt Crimson Peak for all eternity.