Allerdale Hall, which sits atop the clay mine that gives Crimson Peak its blood-red reputation, is a haunted house worthy of Shirley Jackson, of the Winchester House, of the Overlook Hotel, Event Horizon, and Hell House. A gnarl of staircases, mine shafts, oozing vents, scrolled silver, and yellowed paper, all built around a central shaft, choked with drifting snow (or is it ash?) and open to the sky like an immense wound, Allerdale Hall is one of the finest settings ever created for a horror movie. But what’s most surprising about Crimson Peak is that its damaged characters are worthy of filling this space, telling a story that feels as well-placed in the old house as any of its many ghosts.

Crimson Peak Movie Review

Crimson Peak opens in Buffalo, New York, where young writer Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) begins to fall for a cash-stricken English baronet. But what is Thomas Sharpe’s (Tom Hiddleston) real intentions for Edith? Is he just after her because of her father’s money? And what’s with that creepy sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain)? But soon enough its too late for second-guessing, as Edith and Thomas are married and off to his ancestral home, Allerdale Hall and Crimson Peak.

Edith is intelligent and capable, but sheltered. At one point in the early days of their courtship Thomas critiques her character, truthfully calling out her emotional inexperience, even as we can see his deceptive intentions. Thomas Sharpe is a complex and charming man, whose lies are more dangerous for all the truth he fills them with. Meanwhile, his sister Lucille is all bile and guardedness, the dark star of family secrets whose stability Thomas orbits around. Wasikowska, Chastain, and Hiddleston lean into each other with jagged sincerity. The drama in Crimson Peak feels full of living nerves.

Crimson Peak and The Ghost Dimension

Crimson Peak isn’t as much of a ghost movie as billed. Not because there aren’t enough CGI plumes of ectoplasm, but because they’re not the object the story. Instead, ghosts are another feature of the house, each grasping specter another reminder of the oppressive weight the past presses upon the Sharpe sibs. The ghosts themselves are gooey, shimmering bodies, incorporeal without losing the fleshy corpse underneath.

Like Mad Max: Fury Road in slow-motion, Crimson Peak is brimming over with mythology. Both movies are piled high with ideas from directors who have thought out their worlds far beyond the average fantasy. But while Mad Max: Fury Road pared down the action movie to its essentials, Crimson Peak is stuffed with gothic horror to the bursting point. In everything from the strange insect interludes—ants consume a butterfly, eyes first—to the jangling tea sets (just wait for Lucille Sharpe to jitter your bones with a spoon scrape), Crimson Peak cradles you in its ornate and terrible design.

Several reviews have called out the plot of Crimson Peak as “dramatically inert” or even “narrative muck,” particularly once Edith is taken away from the royal court drama of Buffalo’s social elite (a pleasant surprise, Crimson Peak being so charming even before its haunted house). And they do have a small point. Crimson Peak relies on old plots, revivifying Victorian stories and tropes. But Crimson Peak isn’t pleasurable because of its plot twists. Neither is The Conjuring. Instead the pleasures of Crimson Peak are in a familiar story told with electric vision, a watchmaker’s design, and surprising emotional exactness.

Though grand and Hammer-like in its splattered English decay and here’s-the-damn-monster-already showmanship, Crimson Peak focuses all its psychic energy on the emotional gauntlet run by its characters. And while Crimson Peak’s honest sentiment can sometimes be smothered in the projects’ grand stylistic artifice, Crimson Peak never treats its characters falsely. Instead it cuts to the bone of their emotional lives. There are many winks in Crimson Peak, but none of them sacrifice Edith Cushing or the Sharpe siblings’ reality.

Crimson Peak is like The Haunting in effect, del Toro’s haunted house draping horror upon you like a black veil. It is the rare movie that can make spectacle affecting, marking its emotional trail with blood, torn butterfly wings, and the soaring ceilings of Allerdale Hall.