CRIMSON PEAK

Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver and Leslie Hope.
Writers: Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins.
Director: Guillermo del Toro.

Rating: 2.5/5

Genre god Guillermo del Toro’s grand but grating gothic melodrama Crimson Peak is rich in indulgent style but as prone to inconsequential substance as the ghoulish spectres that sporadically manifest.

Such a shortcoming need not be the death knell for a supernatural thriller; plenty have favoured good time frights over thematic complexity. But having established a turn-of-the-century heroine in Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), whose ambition to write smart horror posits her as a gender pioneer, the revered horror auteur bends to suit his favourite old-school tropes, reducing her to a shrieky ‘final-girl’ stereotype at best. At worst, she becomes a mere redemptive tool for Tom Hiddleston’s milquetoast fancy-lad, Thomas Sharpe. It is this lack of narrative ambition that reduces Crimson Peak to an uninvolving nod to horror's 'golden era', instead of the vibrant, modern retelling it could have been.

The film’s creepiest moment happens in the opening minutes, when the ghastly visage of a young Edith’s recently deceased mother returns to forewarn, “Beware of Crimson Peak”; why the maternal spirit (played del Toro regular, legendary movement artist Doug Jones) would take such a terrifying form to revisit her little girl is the first of many logical incongruities that curse the film. We next meet Edith as the well-to-do but independent young woman struggling to break free of her kindly, capitalist father, Carter (Jim Beaver), hawking her first manuscript but butting heads with chauvinist traditionalists.

Her dashing knight arrives in the form of Hiddleston’s entrepreneur who, having failed to secure Cushing’s financing, woos Edith in the wake of a family tragedy and whisks her away to his crumbling English estate, Allerdale Hall. Here, under the snarly glare of his nefarious sister Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain, chewing what’s left of the decrepit home’s scenery), Edith uncovers dealings that reveal The Sharpe’s sinister past and their plans for her alarmingly truncated future.

Scripting with the usually reliable Matthew Robbins, a longtime collaborator (Mimic, 1997; Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, 2010) and industry veteran (The Sugarland Express, 1974; *batteries not included, 1987), Del Toro structures a plot of gossamer flimsiness, clearly designed as a nod to the Giallo genre and Hammer oeuvre (note the protagonist’s surname) but barely able to inject any sense of dread into the labourious proceedings. Save the aforementioned apparition and two moments of ‘that’s more like it!’ ultra-violence, the 119-minute running time proves to be the Mexican director’s cruellest indulgence.

Del Toro the writer entirely cedes this production to del Toro the conceptual artist. From the muddy streets and mansions of Buffalo, New York, to the multi-tiered, majestic ruin that is Allerdale, del Toro’s vision is brought beautifully to life by art director Brandt Gordon (Total Recall, 2012; the soon-to-be-released Suicide Squad) and two-time Oscar-nominated production designer Thomas E Sanders (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1993; Saving Private Ryan, 1999). When the overripe dialogue and stodgy pace prove tiresome, there is always a great deal of artistic detail upon which the eyes can feast.

The ghostly matriarch’s foretelling comes to pass (to no one’s surprise, rest assured) when it is revealed that the locals often refer to Allerdale Hall as ‘Crimson Peak’, after the blood red clay upon which the estate is built. As winter falls and the soil swells with moisture, the grounds turn a corpulent scarlet. So, it’s just mud, that looks gory, but is not at all gruesome or sinister or even very interesting. Such a bloodless, messy foundation seems particular fitting.

It was a similarly vast but vacuous vision that left so many ambivalent towards his last effort, Pacific Rim. The director, whose one true masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth is nearly a decade old, may find himself teetering on the edge of irrelevance in the wake of his latest.

WYRMWOOD

Stars: Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradley, Leon Burchill, Luke McKenzie, Yure Covich, Keith Agius, Catherine Terracini and Meganne West.
Writers: Kiah Roache-Turner and Tristan Roache-Turner
Director: Kiah Roache-Turner.

Rating: 4/5

Feverish fan-boy fanaticism meets film-making fearlessness in the undead ocker shocker, Wyrmwood. Brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner channel their clearly compulsive love for B-movie bloodletting into a debut work that honours the ‘Gore Gods’ of yore as efficiently as it announces the arrival of their own brand of genre genius.

Like death-metal music for the eyes, The Roache-Turner’s bludgeon their audience with a visual and aural onslaught that leaves no skull unexploded in their depiction of a hell-on-earth that is the new Australia. Bold enough to draw upon that hoary old horror trope ‘the meteor shower’ as the narrative kicker, the debutant filmmakers (Kiah gets sole directing honours; both take a writing credit) embark upon a slight but superbly entertaining survival story that pits everyman hero Barry (Jay Gallagher), his sister Brooke (Bianca Bradley, in a ballsy, up-for-anything performance) and new mate Benny (scene-stealer Leon Burchill) against a sunburnt nation of flesh cravers.

Horror-hounds will find the Roache-Turner’s gleeful cinematic nightmare pleasingly familiar. The most influential works are certainly Peter Jackson’s Braindead (aka Dead Alive, 1992), which featured the steely blue and rich crimson colour palette embraced by DOP Tim Nagle; Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness (1992), with its ultra-quick zooms, rapid-fire editing; and, Dr George Miller’s Mad Max (1979), with its ‘vengeful, grieving father’ anti-hero and mastery of open-road car-on-car action. Nods to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) and fellow Aussie sibling-auteurs Michael and Peter Spierig’s Undead (2003) are also present.

But instead of a repackaged homage to their teen year favourites, The Roache-Turners afford Wyrmwood its own strong sense of self-worth. One character’s telepathic connection to the zombie hordes proves crucial to the narrative’s effectiveness; the implication that zombie by-products may be the newest renewable energy is a sly masterstroke; and, a revelation (however tenuously defined) that a universal blood type unites the survivors hints at a hopeful outcome for humanity.

Less assured is the establishment of the film’s real-world villains. The zombies terrify on a visceral level, but the vile antics of a disco-dancing, psychopathic scientist (Berryn Schwerdt) charged with assimilating zombie spinal fluid and Brooke’s human blood don’t sufficiently set up the level of conflict required to ensure a convincing third act face-off with a monologue-ing military jerk (Luke McKenzie). Some perfunctory fisticuffs rob the zombies and the audience of the apocalyptic-size melee expected (such as that delivered by Raimi in his third and epic Evil Dead film); it is the only instance where the meagre budget (an astonishing A$150,000) may have handicapped the auteur’s ambition.

Irrespective of its shortcomings, Wyrmwood will prove a horror festival staple for the rest of 2015 and a boys-own party favourite well into its home entertainment afterlife. As spelt out by blokish bushman Frank (a terrific Keith Agius) in one of the film’s rare quiet moments, the Book of Revelations told of the fallen star ‘Wormwood,’ sent plummeting to Earth by the trumpet cry of an angel, decimating all but those God left to determine their own destinies. For all its grotesque hellishness, Wyrmwood is similarly heaven-sent.

Wyrmwood will open the Perth Underground Film Festival on February 12; tickets available here.