Interview Copyright & Conducted by Edward Gross
When her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. From the imagination of director del Toro comes this gothic romance starring Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre), two-time Academy Award® nominee Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, Mama), Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers, Thor series) and Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim, FX’s Sons of Anarchy). In Crimson Peak, they discover the power that love has to make monsters of us all. As the writer and director of such modern classics as The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth and the producer of such terrifying thrillers as The Orphanage and Mama, del Toro delivers a unique blend of psychological terror and operatic beauty that has propelled horror into the elevated realm of dark fairytales.
Reflecting upon this project’s influences, del Toro shares: “
Crimson Peak is the ghost-story equivalent of
Pan’s Labyrinth. It has the combination of several genres, and the fact that we are packing the punch of a traditional ghost story with the class and beauty of a classic.” He readily admits that his interpretation of the genre broods on the spirituality of human beings. “The elements for successful horror films often come hand-in-hand with a religious set of beliefs. They deal with the supernatural in a particular religious way: demons, damnation, hell.”
As they crafted their screenplay, del Toro and fellow screenwriter Matthew Robbins drew inspiration from such deeply cherished novels as Jane Austen’s
Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens’
Great Expectations, Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca and Anya Seton’s
Dragonwyck, all of which conceal horror in their spines. Del Toro reflects: “In a gothic romance you get a great love story, you get supernatural elements, you get really spooky scenes…all those things combined make a beautiful, gorgeous-looking movie.” For del Toro, material exploring this genre can have ghosts and crumbling castles and “it can have the trappings of a horror film” but intricately seeded is a classical love story in which a central “virginal character who is discovering a secret, a treasure, a dark past…emerges somewhat transformed.”
For more from Guillermo del Toro, check out the one-on-one exclusive interview below.
Check Out These Books Written by Edward Gross: