Crimson Peak

Every now and then I get the chance to work with this moody but funny guy that we call the Honey Badger. We gave him this awesome nickname because his life goal is to one day be one of the old men in The Muppets, so he can sit up in a balcony somewhere and freely hate on everyone that crosses his path. He is known for coming out of nowhere to purposely sabotage our deep conversations with random negative takes, simply to throw us off our game; and the best part about it is, he has this crazed look in his eye as he's doing it.

Well one day as I was writing my review for The Walk, Honey Badger started going off on one of his rants again. And as I was listening to him, I found that all of his hate started to infiltrate my brain, so much so that I myself started hating on random actors in Hollywood for no apparent reason in my review. Before I knew it, half of my review was just a giant diatribe against every actor that has ever worked in the past 20 years. It actually wound up being pretty funny but ultimately it had absolutely nothing to do with the movie itself (I might publish it one day).

The point is, after staying up super late Thursday night to watch Guillermo del Toro's latest offering in Crimson Peak, I kind of wish that Honey Badger was here right now to help give me the proper motivation to write the review that this movie so deserves. Hollywood pitched this movie as a film that would get you in the spirit of Halloween. It was supposed to have ghosts and a ton of chilling scenes that would have you checking under your bed at night. Well as it turned out, this was a cheesy love story that just so happened to have a ghost or two in it.

Del Toro has always been a storyteller who focuses more on the innovative visuals than anything else. And for the most part the spectacular images are still there, it's just that there's 120 minutes of the most boring love story ever told that also accompanies them.

Peak is the story of Edith Cushing's (Mia Wasikowska) marriage to the mysterious Baron Thomas Sharpe. She moves to England with him and his rigid sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) after the violent death of her father. She has a history of seeing ghosts ever since her mother appeared to her shortly after her death to give her a warning. Well from the very second she enters her new husband's house, she hears and sees odd things that no one else can. And within weeks of being there she starts to become deathly ill. So in order to save her life, she must figure out what's causing all of this before it's too late.

Now trust me when I say that I made the plot sound way more interesting than it actually is. The first half of the film is the lame courting period where Sharpe is trying to woo and win over the heart of Edith despite her father's obvious disapproval. There's ballroom dancing and jockeying of positions among the available young ladies in town, and it's all set to the backdrop of the late 1800's. It's basically the perfect movie for women who have a desire to see a live action version of Cinderella. And that's fine if this movie was released on Valentine's Day, not Halloween. I want to see ghosts scare people to death, not hear a five minute speech about how the Waltz is the perfect union between two souls.

And by the time they actually try and turn it into a thriller, half of the audience has already fallen asleep (hand raised) and could care less about what's happening on screen. Del Toro never took the time to properly set the tone for the third act, so once it arrived it felt completely out of place and as a result was ultimately ineffective.

If you're having trouble sleeping at night, might I suggest you save yourself some money and tape a round of golf instead of watching this boring mess. I rate this movie as really WEAK.