gothic horror
The Devil’s Doorway is effective up to a certain point, but ultimately it squanders all of the potential set up in its first act in lieu of a very by-the-numbers found footage horror.
It’s been at least two years now since I first saw Daniel Radcliffe on The Graham Norton Show, sporting the unattractive hair extensions that would define his character, Igor’s, look. Admittedly, I have been excited for Victor Frankenstein since I first heard of its production. A Frankenstein ‘re-imagining’, told from Igor’s point of view, and one starring both Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy?
While most genre filmmakers have a hard time choosing between style and substance, Guillermo Del Toro has become the best filmmaker in the fantasy genre by giving equal weight to the visual design and emotional weight of the narrative; both complement each other in the best of his work. Even in a simple blockbuster movie like Pacific Rim, the substance is always there to be seen due to the clear love for the old-school Kaiju movies that inspired it – to date it is the only major studio tentpole blockbuster that feels like the personal passion project it was devised as. Crimson Peak is Del Toro’s return to gothic fantasy, his first film in the English language that could be comparable to his two Spanish Civil War fairy tales, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.
Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), the new governess for two orphaned children in Victorian England, arrives at their idyllic country estate in the beginning of the psychological horror film, The Innocents (1961). The naive young woman, who has a lived a solidly middle class existence as a vicar’s daughter, marvels at the stately home and spacious grounds. Everything, including her two young charges, seems innocent and perfect.