Crimson Peak: is del Toro's horror-romance too old-school?
Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston star in 'addictively macabre' Victorian romance

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
Guillermo del Toro's horror romance Crimson Peak, which opens in UK cinemas this week, is set to thrill fans of the gothic genre – but is it too old-school for contemporary horror fans?
The film, co-written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins, stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston. Set in a crumbling mansion in Cumbria, in the late 19th century, it tells the story of aspiring author Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), who falls in love with and marries Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), but soon discovers her charming husband is not who he appears to be.
Many critics were delighted with the Mexican director's gorgeous but grisly take on the gothic genre romance.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph calls Crimson Peak "a swooning, swirling Victorian romance spattered with the bright blood of classic Hammer horror". In short, he says, "think du Maurier, but gorier".
Wasikowska is "shimmeringly star-like" and Crimson Peak's "hypnotic, treasure-box beauty" makes it feel like a film out of time, adds Collin. Del Toro carries it off "without a single postmodern prod or smirk".
Indeed, Crimson Peak is an intricate, curlicued marvel of detail, "outrageously sumptuous, gruesomely violent", says Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. It's an addictively watchable macabre Hitchcockian fantasy, he adds, and "there's no doubting del Toro's sulphurous showmanship".
Scott Collura on IGN, notes that Crimson Peak is "a very deliberate return to an old-school type of Gothic horror romance", but one with a uniquely modern spin that switches up gender roles, uses CGI to render its ghastly ghosts and earns its R-rating in spades.
Viewers who are used to a faster, more modern type of horror/thrill experience might have trouble engaging with the film, says Collura. But for those who like del Toro's methods, Crimson Peak is "a beautifully horrifying experience".
Other critics had misgivings about the film.
In Variety, Peter Debruge calls 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 del Toro".
Aflame with colour and awash in symbolism, it's undeniably ravishing, says Debruge. Yet it's ultimately a disappointing haunted-house melodrama that may prove "too frou-frou for genre fans" and "too gory for the Harlequin crowd".
Yes, it's lurid and ghastly and immensely enjoyable and frequently spectacular, says Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. But it's also thinner and less substantial than it wants to be, "like a meal eaten in a dream".
Crimson Peak is full of references and imitations of a certain kind of 1930s or 1940s film, adds O'Hehir. If you're not the exact kind of culture-vulture weirdo for whom del Toro has made this movie, "I'm not sure that Crimson Peak will make any damn sense at all".
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance review
The Week Recommends Fitzwilliam Museum exhibition features lives affected by the Atlantic slave trade
By The Week Staff Published
-
Private Lives review: a 'witty' revival of Noël Coward's classic comedy
The Week Recommends Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers play the warring exes in this 'delicious retro treat'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Wilderness review: a soapy drama set in the American southwest
The Week Recommends Amazon series starring Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson-Cohen is 'full of twists'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Volkswagen ID.5 review: what the car critics say
Feature The ID.4's 'sportier, more stylish twin' – but 'don't believe the hype'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Jamaica Inn review: a small patch of Caribbean heaven
The Week Recommends Guests will feel like one of the family at this boutique beach resort in Ocho Rios
By Natasha Langan Published
-
Scottish Women Artists review
The Week Recommends Exhibition uncovers the work of female artists long hidden in 'historical obscurity'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Dracula: Mina's Reckoning review
The Week Recommends A groundbreaking and distinctively Scottish retelling of Bram Stoker's classic novel
By The Week Staff Published
-
Top Boy review: a fitting finale to the gangland drama
The Week Recommends This brilliant show is bowing out at exactly the right time – at the top
By The Week Staff Published