Friday, November 6, 2015

Crimson Peak (a movie review post)

I want to like this movie more than I actually do. I like del Toro. Mostly. Although he may be shifting to a focus that too much relies on visuals over story for me. Or, maybe, he's always been that way but just happened to have better stories for the movies I liked. At any rate, Crimson Peak is visually amazing. But, then, Pacific Rim was visually amazing; dumber than a box of rocks but visually amazing, nonetheless.

Of course, the thing that stands out most is the ghosts. Or, maybe, the house. The house is pretty amazing. But the ghosts are freaky and cool. And, well, there are issues with the house that take away from its "cool" factor.

So, yeah, ghosts... Because it's a Gothic thing, and you have to have something supernatural in Gothic things, right? Evidently. Except for Wuthering Heights. That one gets by on tragedy alone.

I really wanted to do this without spoilers, but I'm finding myself unable to, because I'm going to just go ahead and say this, so... SPOILER ALERT!

The problem with the ghosts is that they are just a sleight-of-hand, which, in-and-of-itself is fine, I like sleight of hand, but the movie pretends to be a ghost story, and it's not that. It's a story with some ghosts in it. There's a huge difference between those two things. These ghosts are no more than props. To say this is a ghost story would be like trying to say that something is a chair story just because there happened to be some chairs in it.

But they do look cool. The ghosts, not the chairs.

Then there's the house, which also looks cool, but there are so many problems with the house that it drags the movie down into stupidity much like the house is sinking into the clay on top of the peak. Because, you know, the clay is so soft that it can't support the weight of the house but
1. we're expected to believe that someone built a house on clay that soft to begin with.
2. we're expected to believe that a mountain made of oozing clay would even exist.
I could go on with issues around the house (like the huge hole in the roof that exists only so that leaves can aesthetically flutter down around the characters (while they are inside) throughout the movie), but let's just stop there and say that the house broke my suspension of disbelief.

Beyond that stuff, the story is pretty formulaic... in a Flowers in the Attic sort of way. The ghost stuff is just there so that you won't see what's actually going on. You expect a supernatural story. Like I said: sleight of hand.

The acting is decent. That's about all that can be said about, though Tom Hiddleston is quite charming, which is good, because that's exactly what he's supposed to be. Jim Beaver is also good as Edith's father, but, really, it's the same sort of role he always plays, so you can't say he was any better than usual. Jessica Chastain was also pretty much as she always is, cold and somewhat aloof. I'm not sure at this point if she's capable of anything other than that. And Wasikowska... well... she's not bad. But she's also not good. She just kind of is. I find her mostly bland.

So, yeah, I want to like this movie. The use of the ghosts is almost very clever, and, again, cool. But the places where logic and sense are sacrificed to what looks cool are just too plentiful. I can't turn my brain off that much. It's not a movie I'll ever willingly watch again because, now that I've seen it, any other viewing will cause me to be irate at all the dumb.

12 comments:

  1. No, the advertising pretended it was a ghost story, which was misleading. It is a gothic romance with ghosts.
    I thought Chastain was great in her role. She was the most commanding of the leads. Although the house itself was even better.
    Not his best effort, but I liked the style and feel. It wasn't the same level as Pan's Labyrinth, but then again, I will never watch that film a second time. One shot of soul-crushing depression was enough.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alex: She was appropriate for her role, but it is the same part she's played in her last 4 or 5 or 6 movies.

      I did like Pan's Labyrinth, and I actually think I need to see it again. It's been a while and it's become a bit blurred.

      Delete
  2. This fits in with my recent posts. Not sure I'll be seeing it, but I might.

    Arlee Bird
    Tossing It Out

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lee: Yeah, it does. Actually more than you know.

      Delete
    2. Then maybe I should see it after all.

      Lee

      Delete
  3. I think I'll be able to ignore the issues enough to enjoy it. I've definitely seen more egregious leaps of logic lately.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jeanne: More than digging a mine under the house you live in?

      Delete
  4. Visually amazing just isn't enough for me anymore. Obviously film is a visual medium and the spectacle should count for something but story is still the more powerful hook for me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Especially when I'm considering whether or not I'd be interested in watching a particular film again.

      Delete
  5. This is the second bad review of this movie. Doubt I'll see it.

    It's interesting to me what parts of a story break the suspension of disbelief: you could believe the ghosts were real (for the story) but not the mountain of clay. I've had the same thing happen to me. My favorite example is "Bee Movie," in which a talking bee sues humans to get the world's honey back, only to have to (SPOILER ALERT) save the planet by getting floats from the Rose Bowl to repollinate flowers. Throughout this movie all kinds of unreal things happen, but when I watched it with the boys, I got to the part where they sprinkle pollen from roses all over all the flowers in Central Park and everything immediately blooms back into life. I felt like yelling "That's not how it works!" So I was OK with a bee suing and winning the lawsuit, but not with an unrealistic depiction of pollination. I think it was that pollination was presented as "real" science whereas the rest of it was obviously cartoonish, so it was jarring.

    In your case, I suspect it was that the humans were presented as believable humans who happen to live in a world with ghosts present, so the idea that they'd have a hole in the roof was out of place with the construct for humans they had. The mountain of clay, too, violated physics that elsewhere in the movie were otherwise realistic. (I suspect.)

    If you make up rules for your story, you have to have them be consistent. If physics works regularly in the world EXCEPT the mountain of clay, people will find it bothersome.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Briane: I think it's that you can't take multiple, independent liberties with things. You can only take multiple liberties if that all full under some other actual liberty that's being taken.

      Delete