This week on Everything But Bone, we are examining a film from the celebrated, and now Oscar winning, Guillermo del Toro. No fishman love making here, this time we are visiting 2015’s Crimson Peak. Controversial opinion time, this is my favorite del Toro film. It has all of the things that I love: primarily Gothic Horror and all its trappings. It was love at first sight, let me tell you. Like most del Toro films, Crimson Peak was made with great care as to the visuals. Here, I am going to be examining how the costumes help make the story, and how del Toro sneakily colour codes his ghosts.
What is Crimson Peak about? Our heroine Edith Cushing lives in late Victorian era (or if you’re American, Gilded Age) Buffalo, New York. Like many gothic female leads, Edith wants more out of her life. She wants to be a writer and is editing a novel draft. However, her life takes a turn when she meets Sir Thomas Sharpe and his sister Lucille. Elegant and very mysterious, Edith is taken with them both and soon falls in love with Thomas. Unfortunately, this is also a horror story and Edith’s father is murdered shortly after she accepts Thomas’ marriage proposal.
Finding herself at the Sharpe’s ancestral home in England, Edith tries to adjust to living in Allerdale Hall. Alas, the house is literally falling apart and there are ghosts living in it. Not to mention the history of murder…
First off, Crimson Peak is absolutely gorgeous. del Toro always knows how to make his movies seem like you could just walk into them. Making sets believable is the simplest way to get your audience to be immersed in your story. But along with their dilapidated old house, it is the costumes that tell us the most about the Sharpe siblings.
Although it is later confirmed in dialogue, the Sharpe siblings wear clothes that are very out of date for the time period. If you are a Victorian/Edwardian nerd like me, a savvy viewer might notice it right away. Crimson Peak is set around 1900 or so. Edith and her peers wear the Gibson Girl fashion of the time. But the Sharpes wear clothes, that while well taken care of, are from around 20 years previous. It would be akin to your uncle showing up at a party dressed like Ron Burgundy. Something is really amiss when a person needs to desperately update their wardrobe in a film.
By having the Sharpes dress the way they do, del Toro tells the audience that not all is as it should be with the brother and sister. Visually, their darker colours make them stand out during the party scenes. Eyes will be drawn to dark red and black when everyone else is wearing pastels.
Unlike the Sharpes’ clothes, there is another element in the film that’s explanation is never directly stated but, rather, left for perceptive audiences to discover: why the ghosts of Allerdale Hall are colour coded. del Toro’s monsters are not often the bad guys and that is the case in Crimson Peak. Like Edith, the ghosts are victims of the human villains. Played by professional monster men, Doug Jones (Yes, the fishman) and Javier Botet, the ghosts are uncannily creepy. As Allerdale Hall sits over a red clay mine, the ghosts of Thomas’s previous wives are bright red and look as though they have had all their skin flayed off.
But the wives aren’t the only ghosts in the film. The sibling’s mother, Lady Beatrice, is still around in Allerdale Hall, resting in the bathtub where she died. Edith’s mother’s ghost appears to warn her daughter of the danger she’s in. After he’s murdered by Lucille in a rage, Thomas too becomes a spirit. Lucille herself remains in the hall when Edith kills her in self-defense.
The ghosts of Crimson Peak all fit within the style of the film but are different in the way they are categorized by three different colours: red, black, and white. Each colour has its own meaning for the fate of the ghost after death. It took me a few viewings to figure this out. Red ghosts are people who are trapped at Allerdale Hall. Black ghosts are people who choose to stay. White ghosts are people who choose to leave.
I know it may sound like the coloured ghosts are like video game monsters, but this gives Crimson Peak a greater rewatch value. Edith (and the audience) are afraid of ghosts at first glance. But knowing the red ghosts are stuck in the house like Edith, makes them more sympathetic. By colour coding the ghosts, del Toro doesn’t need to spell out the rules of the world.
It’s showing not telling at its finest.
Honestly, there are a dozen aspects of Crimson Peak that I could have chosen to cover in this article. More costumes, the wallpaper, animal motifs, the score, but I decided to write about the ones that meant something to me. Maybe I’ll come back to this film for another Everything But Bone. For those who want to learn more about the film, there is an art book that’s a gold mine of information.
When it came out, Crimson Peak suffered a little because people were expecting a gore fest, and not gothic horror. I wouldn’t have minded more blood and guts, but the film is pretty damn perfect as it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go watch it again.
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