I hate skipping plot summaries when I write one of these, but I think it's probably best when discussing Crimson Peak. The plot here isn't all that important. Crimson Peak is one of those "style over substance" movies. The plot takes a backseat to the cinematography, lighting, costumes, sets, special effects, and just about anything else you can list that makes a movie look good. And what plot there is in Crimson Peak is so filled with holes, I fear that dwelling on it will only make me like the movie less. I'll just say that the plot left me with more questions than it answered.If films are art, Crimson Peak belongs next to the Mona Lisa. It is one of the most stunning pieces of film I've ever seen. Every frame looks like a painting. I'm not sure I've seen a film this beautiful since I watched House of Flying Daggers over ten years ago. The colors, the shadows, the lights - gorgeous. My absolute favorite image (and I'm not alone based on what I've read across the internet) is the ceiling-less grand hall in the rotting great house. It's amazing. Another element that really helps the images come alive is the atmosphere. I may not care for Guillermo del Toro's plot, but there's not denying his skill as a director. He mastfully fills the film with atmosphere so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Combine the atmosphere with the visuals and you end up with a movie I'm going to enjoy on some level despite its other flaws. The acting in Crimson Peak is hit or miss. Normally, I feel that Tom Hiddleston outshines his co-stars, Here, however, he's completely over-shadowed by Jessica Chastain. She acts circles around everyone else in the film. Her role is the smallest of the three main characters, but she dominates everything - even the scenes she's not in. Overall, if you're a fan of gothic romance/horror/mystery (although the horror elements don't come to much and the solution to the mystery is all too obvious) you owe it to yourself to check out his gorgeous film.

RELEASED IN 2015 and written & directed by Guillermo del Toro, "Crimson Peak" is a Gothic drama/mystery/horror about a young woman (Mia Wasikowska) in the opening years of the 1900s who falls in love with a mysterious English man (Tom Hiddleston) and moves from Buffalo, NY, to a creepy English manor, where his weird older sister also lives (Jessica Chastain). Ghosts of the past make themselves known, ultimately leading to the truth.Aside from Jane Eyre and House of Usher, both of which have been filmed several times, "Crimson Peak" has similarities to haunting Gothic flicks like "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992), "The Others" (2001) and "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), but it's thankfully nowhere near as ridiculously melodramatic as the latter. The spectral horror is more low-key than "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," which is why I cite "The Others." Psychological Gothic horror like "Demons of the Mind" (1972) and "The Eternal" (1998) are other comparisons. If you're in the mood for a movie like these, you'll probably appreciate "Crimson Peak."Honestly, this is one of the most sumptuously LOOKING movies I've ever seen. Take, for instance, the numerous scenes of Edith (Mia) walking down the lavish halls in an alluring white nightgown and flowing blond hair. The Gothic lushness is to die for.Some people think the story is meh, but it's no better or worse than the plots of the seven movies listed above. Whilst the first act in Buffalo is somewhat tedious, the movie picks up interest once Edith (Mia) moves to the unsettling English chateau, which has seen better days. I read a critic's list of a dozen questions in an attempt to tear the film to pieces, but I easily answered all of them, which showed that this critic was intentionally LOOKING FOR something to dislike. Every potential quibble is effortlessly explained by clues in the picture or simply reading in-between the lines.THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 59 minutes and was shot in Hamilton, Kingston and Toronto, Canada. ADDITIONAL WRITER: Matthew Robbins.GRADE: B

When I saw that another Guillermo del Toro film was being released, I thought, well, with what this director likes me. Although to tell the truth, the first movie of his that I saw was El laberinto del fauno, marvelous, then I saw the rest of his filmography and the disappointment was enormous. With this continues the disappointment. I do not know how he did it in the other but he does not look like anything in any of his other films. But now it's time to talk about The Scarlet Summit.I can not help but be watching the movie and thinking, did you really not know how to do it better?All effects take me out of the movie.The actors, it seems that they knew they were doing popcorn movies and they said, to make an effort.Photography is fine, but it's the only thingThe address, I do not know why he does not know how to put the camera where he should. He does not narrate with her.The story is more than bony view that nothing new. I imagine that it will have had a magnificent production and I think they set up a scenario simulating the mansion, but they would leave it all there. In short, a disappointment, boring and badly carried.

The current rating for this film is totally unjustified. It should, of course, be zero. Where to begin? The catastrophic script, which sounds like it was written by a creatively-challenged eleven-year-old glue-sniffer trying to cram in every cliché ever regurgitated by Hollywood onto our screens over the last ten decades or so? The utterly ridiculous plot, so badly cobbled together from a handful of implausible premises that it actually makes your eyes water to follow it onscreen? The cringe-makingly horrendous acting, complete with terrible accents from at least two of the main protagonists? The lurid sets that look like they came straight from some cheesy 90s computer game? The bubble-gum-coloured CGI ghosts that would look at home in even cheesier computer games than those of the sets? The hackneyed score that punctuates every move of every leaf, doorknob and eyebrow and that we seem to have heard thousands upon thousands of times before? Yes, folks, it's all here. A true compendium of all the don'ts of filmmaking. And then one asks: how oh how does such unadulterated garbage make it to the big screen? Fudge knows. This is the cinematic equivalent of a very cheap, very rusty 1950s ghost-train ride in a very rundown fairground managed by illiterate crooks, only it comes disguised under a thick veneer of glossy technicolor paint to fool the one or two under-sixes who might just be able to watch this plastic cheeseburger of a film to the end without throwing their arms up in total disgust.