Crimson Peak

The Goth-rom-thriller "Crimson Peak" opens with Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) standing against a startling snowy background, staring at her own bloody hand. Her voiceover emphatically states, "Ghosts are real." This beguiling gem, birthed from the imagination of Guillermo Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth," "The Devil's Backbone") will return to that curious moment in the final reel, and all will be explained. Well, maybe not all.

Set in 1901, the film centers on 24-year-old Edith, an aspiring writer, who lives with her wealthy father, Carter (Jim Beaver), a self-made American industrialist in Buffalo, New York. Edith lost her mother to black cholera when she was only 10, and has been haunted by her mother's ghost ever since. She also has the gift (curse) of being able to communicate with the dead.

"Beware of Crimson Peak," her mother's black, skeletal entity warns her.

Meanwhile, in her non-spooky day life, Edith is trying to get her manuscript noticed. After showing her work to a prospective publisher Edith grouses, "He told me it needed a love story." (It's wonderful to have a turn-of-the-century heroine who is not only allowed a vocation, but is apparently quite good at it.)

Edith is being courted by two radically different suitors: The sensitive, intellectual, gentlemanly Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), who has crushed on her since childhood, and the charming, sexy, roughish Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), who may have ulterior motives. Your basic nice boy/bad boy rivals.

Thomas has a mysterious and creepy sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), whom we first meet at a gathering as she dramatically bangs on piano keys, wearing a crimson red dress, looking rather ominous and imparting her own eerie philosophies, like, "It's a savage world."

Seeking funding for his clay harvesting invention, Thomas is turned down by Carter and warned to stop wooing his daughter. But when the magnate dies a brutally violent, "Boardwalk Empire"-style death, Edith allows herself to be seduced by Thomas's charms and the two are married and relocate to his family estate, Allerdale Hall, in Cumbria, a mountainous region of northern England, also known as... Crimson Peak!

The mansion is built on a subterranean mine where blood red clay bubbles. The wood is rotting, the ceiling is falling in and the house is sinking. Not since 1973s "The Legend of Hell House" has a home had such freakish character.

As the still-virginal Edith settles into her rather terrifying new home, she must deal with the supernatural souls that haunt the home (this time red skeletal) as well as come face to face with the mystifying, always-lurking Lady Lucille (who, of course, also inhabits the mansion) and the true horrors that lie in wait.

Written by Del Toro and Matthew Robbins, and influenced by classic films like "Rebecca," "Wuthering Heights" and "Great Expectations," "Crimson Peak" genre-blends Gothic horror with old-fashioned romance but gives it a modern spin. Something sinister is definitely afoot, but it's much more grounded in reality than in the fantastic.

And that's part of the genius of this cinematic treat. As the secrets of the home and the Sharpe siblings are revealed we realize that, as Del Toro so perfectly puts it, "Humans are the real horror."

Del Toro has fashioned a gorgeous, gruesome, gripping tale where both light and darkness are driven (and manipulated) by love, and where monsters are created by childhood and circumstance. By the time we get to an audacious revelation, some in the audience will have already figured it out, but jaws will still drop.

Wasikowska's forward-thinking protagonist has just the right combination of curiosity and naivete to make her compelling.

But the most fascinating figures are the psychologically tortured Sharpe sibs.

Hiddleston delivers a spellbinding turn as a man who finds himself falling in love and needing to choose between two diametrically opposed worlds: One he's been mired in for so long, and one that could prove redemptive.

But it's Chastain's mesmerizing, unhinged, sometimes campy, always-chilling performance, grounded in the character's own twisted reality, that gives the film its tattered and taboo soul. It's an immersive exploration into the dark and lonely areas of life.

Just watching Chastain feeding Wasikowska porridge in a grueling scene, with her dragging the spoon along the bowl (like nails on a chalkboard), is a study in frightening. It's one of the most unnerving portrayals I have experienced in a long time.

Del Toro dares to give us two important female characters, rich with nuance and he allows both actresses to make bold choices.

One of the great compliments I can pay the creatives is that every aspect of the movie feels like a literary adaptation. It's a true homage and the tech credits are spectacular from Dan Laustsen's enthralling cinematography to Kate Hawley's period perfect costumes to Fernando Velazquez's absorbing score. Special mention to Tom Sanders' production design, key to not just setting the mood but introducing a major character, the ghoulish mansion.

Del Toro's vision had me wondering if, besides Goth Hollywood films, he'd watched some Ken Russell movies recently, or even old "Dark Shadows" episodes. Regardless of where his inspiration came from, he's infused the near-forgotten genre with a renewed excitement and brought great compassion and empathy to all his characters, even the treacherous and depraved ones.