Crimson Peak has often felt like one of Guillermo del Toro’s more underappreciated films, thanks to misleading marketing resulting in a muted performance at the box office back in 2015. It’s only grown brighter in the years since, though, and this new 4K version sees it shine more than ever.

It’s the story of Edith Cushing, an aspiring novelist in New York who gets swept off her feet by dashing British gentleman Sir Thomas Sharpe. Before long, she’s moved to his ancestral home back in England, a crumbling, dilapidated mansion called Crimson Peak. There, she has to contend with Thomas’s very strange sister Lucille, the dark secrets in the Sharpe family history, and the small matter of the ghosts living there too.

Crimson Peak was originally sold as a horror movie, and you can sort of understand why given the ghosts and the fact that red clay from the mine beneath it oozes out of the mansion’s walls. But the clue is in one of the very first lines of the film, when Edith says of her novel, “it’s not a ghost story; it’s a story with a ghost in it”. Yes, there are plenty of ghosts here, spooky goings-on and jump scares, but that isn’t what the movie’s really about.

It’s actually a grand Gothic melodrama, so arch and sincere that it pushes right up against the boundaries of camp. Imagine what would happen if Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing decided to do a Christmas pantomime, and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Crimson Peak. All this, it feels important to note, is intended as praise: we see so few movies willing to take the risks inherent in this kind of tone, the potential for ridicule from irony-poisoned audiences who can’t take this kind of straight-faced melodrama seriously.

For those who are willing to go along with it, there’s an outrageously good time waiting in Crimson Peak’s dank, decrepit halls. You’ll see the twist coming a mile away, but that’s just part of the fun. The cast are perfectly keyed-in to what del Toro needs from them, particularly Jessica Chastain as Lucille, who starts the film brittle and bitchy and by the end is careening down the corridors, brandishing a butcher knife and screaming like a banshee. She’s terrifying and hilarious in equal measure. Charlie Hunnam deserves to be singled out for praise too, as another suitor of Edith’s from back home who thinks he’s the hero but is actually the damsel in distress.

It hardly needs to be said of a del Toro movie but Crimson Peak is truly gorgeous, its lavish costumes and elaborate sets beautifully evoking the kind of old-fashioned haunted-house films it’s calling back to. The mansion itself is a really stunning creation, eerie and creaking but still beautiful despite the fact that the walls bleed. This was always a fabulous movie, and it looks spectacular in 4K.

The fact that the house’s walls bleed tells you all you need to know, really. Crimson Peak is a deeply self-aware movie, and it knows full well that it’s often being quite silly. But camp and melodrama never work if they’re played ironically, and if the actors ever wink at the camera to acknowledge the over-the-top-ness of it all, the spell is invariably broken. Crimson Peak stares into the lens with a completely straight face, and as a result it’s one of the most purely entertaining movies del Toro’s ever made. It’s an absolute riot.

★★★★

Released on 4K on 20th May / Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain / Dir: Guillermo del Toro / Arrow Video / 15