Ghosts are Real, That Much I Know: Crimson Peak

Crimson Peak, at its heart, is NOT a horror film. It's not a ghost story, a haunted house picture, or a monster movie. Its narrative does not rely on the solution to a mystery. Unfortunately, Crimson Peak's various trailers and posters, as well as its very conspicuously spooky October release date, has led many believe that is, in fact, all of the above. This blatant marketing strategy is poisoning audiences against the film, who settle into their theater seats expecting Halloween horror and are greeted with a campy expansion on gothic romance. Of course, there are haunted houses, murderous villains, and ghosts. As the protagonist Edith reminds us, it's not a ghost story so much as a story with ghosts in it.

The plot follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring writer and daughter of an industrialist  in Buffalo, New York. She meets a dashing English baronet, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), when they two of them come to America to looking for investors for Thomas's mining invention. Edith and Thomas marry and return to the Sharpe Estate, Allerdale Hall, in Cumberland, England, where the appearance of ghosts suggests that the Sharpes hold more than a few horrible secrets.

Edith's narrative takes some of its feminist cues from Jane Eyre. Despite being swept off her feet by Sharpe, she never conforms to the "damsel in distress" archetype. She's the antithesis of Wendy Torrance, a kind of fleshed out, complex version of the "final girl" who survives with intelligence and ferocity. Even as her admirer McMicheal swoops in to Allerdale to save her, he is immediately incapacitated, leaving Edith to handily rescue both of them. As an aspiring writer, she's told by a potential publisher that because he is a woman, a love story must be added to her manuscript. She also decides to increase her chances of getting published in the Atlantic Monthly, she will submit her story as a typed document, in order to conceal her 'feminine handwriting.' At the close, we learned that Edith has used the trauma to her advantage; she had written and published a novel called Crimson Peak. She has not only  saved herself, but she has also fulfilled her greatest dream. Crimson Peak allows Edith's character to mature; it's a coming of age tale in the most dire of circumstances. She remains at the emotional core throughout the film, and her rationality acts as a force of stabilization that carries us through the melodramatic extravagances of the action.

Edith may well be the heart and soul of Crimson Peak, but the real fun lies in the melodrama- and in Jessica Chastain's campy performance as Lucille Sharpe. Chastain's Lucille is palpably demented from her first appearance on screen to her last, and she's fun to watch, a far cry from her performance in Zero Dark Thirty or A Most Violent Year. In comparison, Tom Hiddleston is nearly lifeless. 

The most sucessful player in the film in not an actress (or even a ghost), it's the house itself. Beautifully dilapidated, the house is a blatant parallel to the Sharpe siblings themselves, and as Thomas Sharpe tells Edith, it even breathes with the wind and bleeds red clay. As the Sharpe's souls and fortunes wither away, so does the house itself. Of course, the decaying old estate is a stock image in haunted house horror films and literature; in this case, it borrows a little too much from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". What sets Allerdale Hall apart from all the rest is its meticulously elegant art direction, the result of Brandt Gordon's interpretation of del Toro's signature style. Everything is lush and decadent, the costumes made of rich, heavy fabrics, the woods dark and luxurious, the rooms airy and elegant. Once we get a closer look, however, it's apparent that everything is in a process of slow decay: dust everywhere, dead flies lying on tables, a hole in the room which allows wind, leaves, and snow inside the main hall.

The ghosts in the film are as richly designed as the sets.They are played by actors (Doug Jones and Javier Botet) , whose performances are augmented with CGI  in post production. They appear in bold red and black, and they have a skin-like texture that is  reminiscent of the flesh that they once had, which grounds them in a strange kind of reality. They are grotesque and terrifying, but by reminding the audience that they were once human, they elicit the kind of empathy required to make their appearance truly effective. 

The plot of Crimson Peak has a melodramatic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink flair that, although tremendous fun, materializes out of (almost) nowhere  from the romance of the first half of the film. It's hard to say if the film would have been improved by omitting the first act entirely, but its slow pace and sickly sweet attitude did drag it down. It's certainly a mistake for del Toro to dispense so much information so early and so haphazardly. Several rather clumsy conversations between the Sharpes indicate that these two do have some kind of malevolent plan to steal Edith's inheritance, and it's no surprise when one of them appears to brutally murder Edith's father. We're never really allowed to participate in Edith's investigations, because we know far too much far too early. The dramatic irony del Toro employs lessens the blow of the real secret, and the revelation is much less shocking than intended. 

Despite this, Crimson Peak's brutal conclusion is engaging and, most of all, great, campy fun, especially in contrast with the slow, emotional opening act. When Edith stabs Lucille with the ball point pen her father  had given her, it's a gleefully satisfying act of revenge, as well as a not so subtle metaphor. Weapons are wielded (knives, shovels, cleavers), blood is spilled, and villains are vanquished, and result is extremely gratifying. 

Crimson Peak is clearly a del Toro passion project, and it's a wonder that a studio consented to finance this decidedly non-commercial enterprise. Despite its self-indulgent melodrama and wild fluctuations in tone, Crimson Peak is a fun, imaginative, and absolutely gorgeous ride, and definitely warrants a viewing before it leaves theaters. 

Horror, Hearth, and Home in Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal

Ivan Kavanagh's 2014 film The Canal  reminds us that dread, carefully cultivated and forcefully deployed, powers a great horror film. The Canal combines the methodology, supernatural and psychological horror, and family drama of The Shining with the basic premise of Sinister. Our protagonist, David, is a film archivist who receives a reel whose footage shows a horrific murder committed in 1902 in the house he lives in with his young child, Billy, and his wife, Alice. Predictably, after watching the footage, a series of strange and horrible events begun to occur, including the mysterious death of Alice. Swamped in grief, David starts to feel threatened by strange noises and ghostly apparitions. Throughout, the audience questions what exactly is the cause: is it really ghosts connected to the 1902 murders or is it David's mental deterioration? Are any of these happenings real? And was Alice's drowning really an accident?

Like The Shining, The Canal features a male protagonist who, after being subjected to intense stress (Jack Torrance's  writer's block, cabin fever, and recovery from alcoholism and David's discovery of his wife's affair), is haunted by his desire to escape from that stressor. Jack Torrance, for example, sees  a ballroom filled with ghosts where he falls off the wagon, and David perceives that he is the victim of malevolent ghosts to avoid acknowledging that he is the real perpetrator of his wife's murder.

At heart, The Canal is a family drama. Its horror is propelled by the the David's deep anxiety regarding the family structure that is dissolving before his eyes. He worries that he will lose his wife to another man. He worries that once his wife has died, he will also lose his son. David's desperate attempts to protect his family are what we hope will redeem him. However, the film's conclusion uses those same sacred familial bonds to endanger David's son, proving that evil truly does live at home.

It's Not All Just Water Under the Bridge: Diabolique, Psycho, and Water as Metaphor

Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 film Diabolique is the French question which was answered five years later by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho is, of course, a gold-star member of the horror movie canon and a lesson in the deployment of psychological tension in film. Many elements of Psycho, however, echoed Diabolique. These two partner-in-crime films are notable for their somewhat inverted deployment of water as a harbringer of death.

Water in any form is often used as a symbol of rebirth and purification. A timely (and heavy-handed) example occurs at the conclusion of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, when Dr. Ryan Stone emerges naked from the ocean where her space capsule has crashed. She has survived intense trauma, both in space and on earth, and she is finally able to relieve herself of her psychological burden, a purification which is symbolized by the sea. In Roman Polanski's 1971 version of Macbeth, Macbeth asks after the murder of Duncan: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand?" Lady Macbeth assure her husband that "a little water" will remove the blood from their hands and the crime from their conscience. Later, driven mad by guilt for her actions, Lady Macbeth imagines bloodstains on her hands, and seeks out water to absolve herself. Here, she turns to water as an instrument of repentance.

In Psycho and Diabolque, however, water possesses none of these powers. Instead, it serves as a threatening agent of death and destruction.Our protagonist in Psycho, Marion Crane, is famously murdered in the shower by Norman Bates. Here, the setting is powerful because it signifies vulnerability: Marion is naked, defenseless, and attempting to cleanse herself. But with the appearance of Norman and Marion's subsequent death, the water almost becomes an accomplice in her murder. Her blood mixes with water and Hitchcock directs us to watch it slide slowly down the drain. The second appearance of water is just as powerful, as Norman places Marion's body in her car along with the stolen money  and sinks it in a pond on the Bates Motel property. Now, the water has become both the setting of her murder and her grave. At the film's conclusion, after Marion's sister and lover have apprehended Bates, we see the police dragging Marion's car (and her body) out of the pond, releasing her from the water's power.

Similarly, in Diabolique, the appearance of water means death is imminent. Christina and Nicole both drown Michel in a bathtub. As they return to the boarding school with his body, water leaks from the wicker trunk, attracting notice and and almost getting the women caught. Back at school, they throw the body into the pool, surprising that when his body rises to the surface, Michel's death will be deemed to be an accident. At this point, water's role is as both crime scene and burial ground, like Psycho, although in this case it is also the medium of murder, which only strengthens its associations with death.

After attempting  to orchestrate the discovery of Michel's corpse by students, Nicole and Christina drain the pool, and discover that the body has disappeared. Here, water reminds us of its powers of resurrection.

Later, an unidentified corpse is found drowned in the river, and Christina believes it may be Michel, although it is revealed to be a stranger. Once again, water appears in conjunction with death. Here, and in the swimming pool from which Michel's corpse has disappeared, water also alludes to Nicole and Christina's impending doom. Each incident suggests that the two women will be caught, and the psychological effects of this are especially evident in Christina, whose already sickly heart grows even weaker.

Water's final appearance is indeed the most significant. Christina is awoken during the night, and finds Michel's dead body submerged in her bathtub, looking exactly as it did when Nicole and Christina murdered him. Christina clutches her heart and dies. We see
Michel stand and remove a pair of contact lenses, dripping water, and reunite with Nicole, where it is revealed that Michel's murder was a plot contrived by Nicole and Michel to frighten Christina to death, so the two lovers can be be together and so Michel can inherit the boarding school and her money.Water is once again a force of dark resurrection, while retaining its association with death and evil.

In both Diabolique and Psycho, water negates its usual associations. Instead of being a nurturing substance, water is an instrument of death, a cousin to murder, and a grave site.

Inherent Vice: "She's not just a boat, Doc... She's much more than that."

Postmodernist author and notable recluse Thomas Pynchon has only had one of his novels turned into a movie, and for good reason. Loose plots, unintelligible conspiracies, social satire, clever wordplay, and brobdingnagian length combine to make most of his works prime candidates for "unfilmability." Not to be intimidated, America's cinematic master Paul Thomas Anderson took up the challenge, adapting Pynchon's Inherent Vice into a film of the same name. 

In an atmosphere of pothead paranoia, Anderson crafted a sunny California noir, where Doc Sportello ( a hilarious Joaquin Phoenix) , a malingering hippie gumshoe living in southern Los Angeles in 1970, receives a request from his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth 
(Katherine Waterston)to find her missing millionaire boyfriend (Eric Roberts). From here, plots and subplots converge; diverge; disappear, only to be picked back up again. Eccentric characters- most with indiscernible motives and all with something to hide- flicker in and out of the film's periphery, pushing and pulling Sportello on his quest to restore Los Angeles to the peaceful optimism of the 1960s.

The tangled plot is, of course, reminiscent of those films noir of the 40s and 50s, with all the same stock characters (detective, femme fatale, millionaire involved in a troublesome organization) and convoluted mysteries. Anderson populates his version of the noir with California beaches and hopeful neon lights punctuating a haze of pot smoke in the darkness. Here, the mystery is really unsolvable, because the mystery is never what Doc (or the audience) thinks it is. The bigger mystery, bigger than Wolfmann and Harlingen and the Golden Fang, is what exactly has happened to Calfornia, which was to have been the last refuge of the idealistic; the version of America that might have been. The shopping malls are taking over, the cracks are beginning to show: even Doc's Los Angeles has fallen apart. The America of the imagination has been unintentionally self-destructing, and as the sixties roll into the seventies, there is nothing good left. Human nature will inevitably ruin even what it tries to create. Not even Doc's hippie counterculture is safe from destruction. 

The film opens up with an epigraph: "Under the paving stones, the beach!" This refers literally to the 1968 Paris student riots, where protesters pulled up paving stones to throw at the police, only to discover that sand lies underneath. For Pynchon and Anderson, it means that the construct of the corrupted American society conceals and suppresses the ideal life that lies beneath. Inherent Vice tells us that it's too late to save even the Doc Sportellos; that Los Angeles is no longer a refuge. That eventually even the ark sinks.