Crimson Peak
Nov. 10th, 2015 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99How you feel about the film will probably be based on your feeling about original flavour Victorian gothic melodrama. It’s not my thing, so I know I am not the target audience. It was very well made though.
Special note for K - you know all the Gothic Victoriana that Elizabeth Peters mocks. This film is all of it. In one! Only more explicit.
As I said, part of the problem is that I am not sympatico to Victoria Gothic, but I know enough of the tropes that the twists don't really twist.
I also recognise speeches from Jane Eyre, and I'm sure Edith would as well. Ladies, if you were being proposed to by someone who ripped his lines straight from a book, exactly how much would you say no? (Matters are not helped by having watched Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre, and it being a much better film than this.)
It also makes the madwife sister in the attic joke impossible to resist.
I liked Edith when she had something to do other than look terrified. Unfortunately, she spent most of the film looking terrified. This is a waste of Mia Wasikowska who is an actress I really love.
I did like Edith's father, and was sad to see him get killed off, and I liked Charlie Hunnam's character, even if I was thinking 'I know you can do a better American accent than that' while trying to place it. New England Irish was what it came out as, as best as I can place it.
His character even showed moments of sense, like telling people where he was going! Admittedly he then decided to turn his back on two homicidal maniacs, but he at least showed signs of intelligence.
Jessica Chastain is the best thing in this film. There's something so tightly wound about her Lucille that it becomes obvious she's going to snap at some point, and when she does, whoa boy! (I also nominated Jessica Chastain for Lady Macbeth in something.)
I think part of my problem is that I'm far more sympathetic to Lucille than to her brother, the aforementioned line-stealer. It's not that she's good, and she significantly more murderous than he is, but it seems to be that she's spent her whole life shielding him from things, and she's carried on, and while he's happy to live off the proceeds of her murders, she's the one that has to do the killing and then he spends all the money on something to entertain himself (okay, it might eventually work but ...). And it's not like he can claim ignorance of what she's doing.
And the film sort of leans towards them both being equally culpable, but for some reason, he's the one that's seen as redeemable. Which is annoying. I still think Edith had him bang to rights when she, accidentally, calls him a parasite.
Other than I have now reached the stage where I can recognise Doug Jones by his fingers, even when they're covered up by CGI, while I can see why they had to use CGI for some of the effects, but it's noticable that the CGI effects aren't anything as ooky as the practical effects (the practical effects for Edith's Dad's murder are particularly and wonderfully horrid).
CGI lacks *something* and I don't know what it is. It's almost like a lack of gravity or solidity or something.
Part of the problem with the CGI-ifiedness of bits is that none of it looks real, and makes the thing look like a fairytale, which I'm not sure is deliberate.
Special note for K - you know all the Gothic Victoriana that Elizabeth Peters mocks. This film is all of it. In one! Only more explicit.
As I said, part of the problem is that I am not sympatico to Victoria Gothic, but I know enough of the tropes that the twists don't really twist.
I also recognise speeches from Jane Eyre, and I'm sure Edith would as well. Ladies, if you were being proposed to by someone who ripped his lines straight from a book, exactly how much would you say no? (Matters are not helped by having watched Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre, and it being a much better film than this.)
It also makes the mad
I liked Edith when she had something to do other than look terrified. Unfortunately, she spent most of the film looking terrified. This is a waste of Mia Wasikowska who is an actress I really love.
I did like Edith's father, and was sad to see him get killed off, and I liked Charlie Hunnam's character, even if I was thinking 'I know you can do a better American accent than that' while trying to place it. New England Irish was what it came out as, as best as I can place it.
His character even showed moments of sense, like telling people where he was going! Admittedly he then decided to turn his back on two homicidal maniacs, but he at least showed signs of intelligence.
Jessica Chastain is the best thing in this film. There's something so tightly wound about her Lucille that it becomes obvious she's going to snap at some point, and when she does, whoa boy! (I also nominated Jessica Chastain for Lady Macbeth in something.)
I think part of my problem is that I'm far more sympathetic to Lucille than to her brother, the aforementioned line-stealer. It's not that she's good, and she significantly more murderous than he is, but it seems to be that she's spent her whole life shielding him from things, and she's carried on, and while he's happy to live off the proceeds of her murders, she's the one that has to do the killing and then he spends all the money on something to entertain himself (okay, it might eventually work but ...). And it's not like he can claim ignorance of what she's doing.
And the film sort of leans towards them both being equally culpable, but for some reason, he's the one that's seen as redeemable. Which is annoying. I still think Edith had him bang to rights when she, accidentally, calls him a parasite.
Other than I have now reached the stage where I can recognise Doug Jones by his fingers, even when they're covered up by CGI, while I can see why they had to use CGI for some of the effects, but it's noticable that the CGI effects aren't anything as ooky as the practical effects (the practical effects for Edith's Dad's murder are particularly and wonderfully horrid).
CGI lacks *something* and I don't know what it is. It's almost like a lack of gravity or solidity or something.
Part of the problem with the CGI-ifiedness of bits is that none of it looks real, and makes the thing look like a fairytale, which I'm not sure is deliberate.
