Sometimes I get so down on contemporary cinema that I begin to wonder if I should not just stop going to the movies altogether. Then, I’m reminded that Guillermo del Toro exists, and that he keeps on making movies, and I feel better. Now that the big robots and aliens are coming at us in Pacific Rim, Del Toro has begun talking about his next film, Crimson Peak.
So far Crimson Peak has been described as a haunted house film and a gothic ghost story in the old style. Charlie Hunnam recently referred to it as a ‘Jane Austen-style haunted house extravaganza,’ which I assume means that it’s a period piece. Despite a stellar cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Hunnam, we do not know much more about Crimson Peak. But del Toro is really teasing this one, calling it a meld of his Spanish and more mainstream styles. Here’s what he told STYD:
Crimson Peak is a much, much, much smaller movie, completely character-driven. It’s an adult movie, an R-rated movie, pretty adult. Shockingly different from anything I’ve done in the English language. Normally, when I go to do a movie in America for the spectacle and younger audience, for Blade or whatever. This movie’s tone is scary and it’s the first time I get to do a movie more akin to what I do in the Spanish movies… The thing I do in those movies is recontextualization, take a movie and then move it into a completely different place. Like a Gothic and then move it into the Spanish Civil War [The Devil’s Backbone]. This is a Gothic romance, haunted house, in the north of England.
Del Toro is not coming up with anything more specific than that in terms of plot, but he did tease a bit about the film’s ‘kinkiness’:
[The film] has a lot of kinky moments. The only kinky moment I’ve ever shot is the leg fuck in The Devil’s Backbone. [laughs] This has a little more kinkiness than that.
Give Guillermo del Toro all the awards for getting us interested in a movie that we actually know nothing about.
This does make Crimson Peak sound much closer to films like The Devil’s Backbone or the del Toro-produced The Orphanage. As much fun as it might be to see del Toro’s robots vs. aliens vision, I feel like he’s at his best with the smaller, more personal and more visceral stories.
While my sole interest in Pacific Rim lies in the fact that Guillermo del Toro directed it, Crimson Peak has me more intrigued. Haunted houses, gothic style, awesome cast, visceral violence and … kinkiness? Yes, please. I’m there.
Unfortunately Crimson Peak will not start shooting until February 2014 – but perhaps we’ll get a bit more plot detail, or at least some more enticing teasers, long before then. In any case, we will be able to have our fill of one type of del Toro vision when Pacific Rim comes to theatres July 12.