Guillermo Del Toro, a visionary director in his current state, has put his stamp on quite a few collective pieces of modern art when it comes to filmmaking. Crimson Peak, his latest, doesn’t leap bounds in order to succeed as his best work..ever (that honor belongs to Pan’s Labyrinth). In fact, Crimson Peak, aside from a few well timed digital effects sequences, is quite conventionally plotted. Del Toro has made a very bloody stylized film here, it’s just entirely too predictable, and most importantly, not effective in how it wants to scare the audience.

Mia Wasikowska (Alice In Wonderland) plays young and distress, Edith Cushing, herself being an aspiring fiction writer of gothic melodramas, and lives in a lavish turn-of-the-century Buffalo home as the only child of widowed industrialist Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), who worked his way up the ladder, hard. Although highly intelligent, Edith remains haunted by the fragments of her mother’s sudden passing, so much so, she receives, what seems like, nightly visits from her ghostly reincarnation telling her “beware crimson peak” about several dozen times. This first hour alone is situated in ritual, as if taken out of a horror lovers playbook.

Edith defenses slightly falter as the newly arrived, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) an englishman who has come, accompanied by his less than social sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), seeking American backing for a ‘clay harvester’, a mining machine that will efficiently do the work it takes many men to accomplish. Seeing right through the puppy dog eyes of Sir Thomas Sharpe, and his sister obliqueness, sir old Cushing uses his sleuthing skills to find out that something is quite off about the these siblings. You bet there is.

Sadly, Cushing’s detective skills leaves him the victim of a perilous murder, which was made to look like an accident. This leaves Edith free to follow her heart’s purpose. For the time being, her purpose feels to marry Sir Thomas, and head to England to be his virgin bride. Unfortunately, Lady Lucille is part of the package deal – a scary big part, in fact. Remember Kathy Bates in Misery? Picture that.

Of course the manner the trio leave in is nothing short of, by definition, spooky. Things creep, crawl and all sorts of oozy clay seeps through the walls as to add a layer of already haunted thoughts. Now a prisoner in a cold dilapidated mansion, Edith must endure harsh truths, as she comes into contact with grasping black ghosts as she sneaks around the house – desperately trying to uncover secrets to gain any advantage over Lucille, who feels her brother’s affection slipping away from her.

All the actors on hand play most of this straight forward, with a clear and concise diction in what they’re doing. Specifically Chastain, who has such an underlying subtext in every word she professes, you want to squeal at the sheer sight of her indignity. That being said, not much else eludes to a tier of more than just second rate haunts, more so than we have seen in other better made films like: The Woman In Black. However, no story of this magnitude, has been told with such creative nuance, it may in fact maybe a sin for me not to suggest you see the movie. Toro has a glossy eye for making his images flux with such bravado. But I can’t forget the predictable nature of which this is all played. The first half of Peak almost feels like some disoriented episode of Downton Abbey, complete with opera like suffixes. It’s not until the film’s final leg, is when Del Toro steps up the atmospheric tension, and follows the story.

I suppose the bottom line is, Crimson Peak is a made for gothic horror movie, although I feel it could work better as a 1947 episode of Clue. The film has a few tricks up its sleeve that almost pushed me to realm of recommending it, yet on the other side it just, for lack of some better words, looks really really good. So a very mixed review here from this critic, as always the choice is ultimately yours. Just be forewarned, there aren’t many surprises to be had here. Grade: C+