Crimson Peak Review

Crimson Peak is a movie about Edith Cushing, a young woman, aspiring author that believes in the existence of ghosts and with a good reason.  I guess that’s all I can say without giving out more than the first few minutes in the film do.

Mia Wasikowska portrays Edith and she captures her carefree spirit with a great performance.  Moreover in the two supporting roles of Lucille and Thomas Sharpe, are Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston respectively, who excel with superb performances.  All three characters are very different and the dynamic between them is incredible at times, very much intensified by the amazing acting by all three actors and mostly Chastain.

At the core of any Guillermo Del Toro movie, there is a great story accompanied by amazing production design, costumes, and Crimson Peak is no different.   Everything is just so incredible to look at, it just adds so much to the authenticity of the setting, making it feel as real as possible.

The plot unfolds a bit slowly at the beginning.  It takes a long time to get to the real deal and even though we know something bad will happen just from the opening scene, half of the movie is building to that moment.  From one point of view, that’s a good thing because we get to explore and understand the characters and their actions better, but on the other hand, when we reach that final act and all hell breaks loose, it’s so intense and suspenseful that you just wished there was more of that.  I guess making the viewer wait makes it even better in the end.

A creepy gothic romance, that doesn’t care about jump scares and silly horror tricks, there just isn’t time for any nonsense in this story driver film. 

7.5/10

Movie Review-It Follows

I don’t usually watch horror movies, but somehow I ended up watching this one at the cinema (I am not going to bore you with the details).  The movie starts with a quiet intriguing first scene which is disturbing in a way you would associate with horror films.  It sets up what follows (no pun intended) perfectly and the story in the next 25 minutes unfolds at a steady pace which introduces the general concept, the rules of the game if you will, with an interesting cryptic style. Allowing the audience to become immersed in this terrifying experience that Jay, the lead character portrayed by Maika Monroe, is having and understand what is happening at the same time as she is.

The next part of the film is all about Jay and her ordeal and the help she receives from her friends as she tries to overcome that.  More often than not it’s quiet intriguing to see how everyone involved reacts to a weird and out of the ordinary situation. Their are a few jump scares and and some half scary moments but the movie isn’t about the theatergoers being scared but rather experiencing this terrible situation with the characters and getting agitated with the predicament they face.  Sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t and that is when the story starts feeling a bit stagnated.

The best thing about this movie is the way that it was shoot, which as I said before, manages at times to immerse the audience in the story and makes us empathize with the main characters, that accompanied with some good acting helps manifest the terrifying experience that the teenagers in the lead of the movie must be experiencing.

7/10