Crimson Peak 2015

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: All the carefully orchestrated color schemes and all the dark corridors and secret chambers and all the flowing red metaphors in the world can't accelerate the slow patches, or make us care about lead characters. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: The setting is spectacular, but its ghosts underwhelm. Kudos to del Toro for bucking the minimalist trend in spooky movies, but his Grand Guignol spirits are so visible they begin to resemble fun-house monsters. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Aflame with color and awash in symbolism, this undeniably ravishing yet ultimately disappointing haunted-house meller is all surface and no substance, sinking under the weight of its own self-importance into the sanguine muck below. Read more

Katie Rife, AV Club: Unsurprisingly for a Del Toro film, the production design is the real star of Crimson Peak. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Is it too much? Oh, yeah. But if you like this kind of thing, too much is never enough. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Del Toro's creativity, the joy he finds in splicing together pieces of the movies and books and characters he loves, is hard to resist. This is a film that believes deeply in ghosts, and half of them are in its director's head. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The real wonder is the sumptuous production design by Thomas E. Sanders, whose darkly colorful sets were inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Crimson Peak" is frustrating from nearly every angle. It lets the audience race ahead of the reveals, while struggling to put all that tantalizingly rich atmosphere to effective narrative use. Read more

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: A loving throwback to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies and Hammer's gothic chillers from the '60s, Crimson Peak is a cobwebs-and-candelabras chamber piece that's so preoccupied with being visually stunning it forgets to be scary. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: [It's] certainly unequaled in its field for the beauty of its camerawork, sets, costumes and effects. But it's also conventionally plotted and not surprising or scary at all. Read more

Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly: A faithful homage to a foolish genre. The risk is that audiences who don't share that love won't appreciate the work, like the world's best cover band nailing obscure nu-metal hits Read more

Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury News: This haunted house flick has all the discipline and restraint of a Spirit Halloween store. Once the suspense is gone, all that's left is the blood spatter. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: An extravagantly entertaining ghost story. Hiddleston could be our next Vincent Price. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Del Toro builds a tight plot but never develops it; his frames are overdecorated with macabre clutter and smothered in shadow, but the atmosphere of dread never reaches ecstatic excesses. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: At its worst, and best, "Crimson Peak" exists in a weird parallel world where very separate rules of logic apply. It's a true waking nightmare. Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: For genre mavens, the experience is like witnessing the revival of a lost art form. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The film is too busy, and in some ways too gross, to sustain an effective atmosphere of dread. It tumbles into pastiche just when it should be swooning and sighing with earnest emotion. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Director Guillermo del Toro's unique visual style is on display but the story is predictable, the characters are flat, and the supernatural elements are red herrings. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Guillermo del Toro doesn't merely direct movies. He paints them, dreams them, shapes them into private fantasies. Too much? Of course. But that's part of the fun. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Lurid and ghastly and immensely enjoyable and frequently spectacular and also thinner and less substantial than it wants to be, like a meal eaten in a dream. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "Crimson Peak" is more creepy than scary (despite a couple of gruesomely violent deaths), but del Toro's imagination blooms in every frame. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Del Toro just goes for effect, and the effect he seems to be going for here is something like, "Ew, Guillermo, that's really gross." Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: For the two hours it lasted I wasn't asking any questions, only giggling, squirming, screaming, and swooning. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: This gothic horror opus is melodrama most foul, and I mean that in terms of concept and execution, as well. Read more

David Sims, The Atlantic: Though Crimson Peak's tone is arch enough that it won't be for everyone, there's definitely a gory, beating heart at its core. Read more

Jason Gorber, Globe and Mail: Guillermo del Toro's latest dive into the darkness is a sumptuous, beautifully constructed tale that feels both archaic and inviting. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: You don't go to a del Toro movie for the story (he co-wrote this one with Matthew Robins) or even the characters. You go for his all-encompassing imagery ... Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: The insanely lush Gothic romance and ghost story plays like a hitherto unrecorded collaboration between Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, the designers of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion and whoever directed all those Bonnie Tyler music videos in the 1980s. Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: This often entertaining film feels like a mish-mash of overfamiliar elements, falling way short in the wild, weird, what-the-f----was-that department. Read more

Steve Tilley, Toronto Sun: It's not particularly creepy, nor all that emotional, nor even (deliberately) silly. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: Crimson Peak is a fascinating conundrum of a movie. I was close to hating it as I walked out of the theater, but images and moments from it have stayed with me. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: The old-fashioned good intentions of "Crimson Peak," like the house at the center of the film, quickly get swallowed up by puddles of bright red goo. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: As even [Del Toro's] last film, the kaiju monster movie Pacific Rim, proved, there may be no better conjurer of color in movies right now. His dreams, and nightmares, are in technicolor. Read more