This is headily sumptuous, seductive filmmaking, beautiful and grotesque, with the best-realised ghosts since del Toro’s own The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

| May 28, 2024

What [Guillermo] del Toro had in mind when shooting Crimson Peak was probably a stylish gothic period piece in the same acclaimed lane as Pan's Labyrinth. Unfortunately, Crimson Peak fails to work on that level.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 24, 2017

Not only did I love every silly, gothic, gorgeous minute of Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, I'm actually suspicious of those who didn't.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 12, 2016

The set is spectacular, the cast is stellar, but Guillermo del Toro's haunted costume drama is short on drama - and scares.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 25, 2016

When Guillermo del Toro set out to co-write and direct Crimson Peak, a work of Gothic horror as gorgeous as it is preposterous, the word "restraint" must have been missing from his movie-making mission statement.

| Nov 20, 2015

Crimson Peak is an effort to make a throwback movie with modern effects and modern sex scenes, but it can't contend with the modern gaze with which we're looking at it.

| Nov 9, 2015

The house's eye-popping extravagance and intricate designs simultaneously conjure feelings of unease and the desire to explore it further-a testament to the benefits of putting money into art direction.

| Oct 29, 2015

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.

| Oct 26, 2015

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2015

The real wonder is the sumptuous production design by Thomas E. Sanders, whose darkly colorful sets were inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

| Oct 22, 2015

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."

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 21, 2015

A period drama that doesn't rely on heaving bosoms to register passion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2015

Crimson Peak is one of the year's most handsomely mounted productions. More importantly, it is a film with a palpably beating heart ...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2015

Guillermo del Toro's latest dive into the darkness is a sumptuous, beautifully constructed tale that feels both archaic and inviting.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 16, 2015

Crimson Peak is Guillermo del Toro's imagining of the gothic horror movie genre, with unmistakable hat-tips to films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca resonating in the eerie mansion that serves as the setting for a large chunk of the narrative.

| Oct 16, 2015

The problem here is that the film-makers throw too many elements into the mix. Grand Guignol bloodletting is combined with characters and ideas which often seem to have been borrowed from Rebecca.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2015

Gothically impressive visuals rise... story unfortunately fizzles.

| Original Score: 2.3/4 | Oct 16, 2015

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.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 16, 2015

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.

| Oct 16, 2015

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.

| Oct 16, 2015