Gothic Romance: Crimson Peak (Dir Guillermo Del Toro, 1h59m, 2015)
One cannot talk about Gothic cinema since the turn of the century without mentioning Guillermo Del Toro. Since 2001's The Devil's Backbone, and certainly since directing the beloved Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro has practically become the standard-bearer for horror cinema of a certain type, a director who, by his own admission, "love(s) monsters, I identify with monsters", and has spent the last thirty years directing paeans, and in some cases ( Pacific Rim (2013) The Shape of Water (2018) and Frankenstein (2025)) are unapologetic love-letters to monsters, horror cinema, and Gothic horror in particular. No trip to the tottering towers and haunted manor houses of the Gothic romance is complete, thus, without arriving at Del Toro's sole Gothic Romance, the 19th Century ghost story that is Crimson Peak. At its centre, Crimson Peak is best understood as a haunted house film-Del Toro would later admit that the film's underperform...
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