Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)

Del Toro took quite a misstep with this, a Gothic horror piece with ghosts and incest thrown in for good measure. The titular setting is a decrepit mansion in northern England just after the turn of the century harbouring a dark secret, occupied only by an aristocratic brother and sister until he marries a naive young American, heir to her recently deceased father's fortune.
It begs incredulity as to how matter-of-factly she takes the visitations of her mother's ghoulish spirit in her stride, let alone the Addams-family in extremis aspect of the house, and when things go heavily down the Grand Guignol route, it really gets both distasteful and ridiculous. Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain are wasted as the sinister siblings and Mia Wasikowska is badly out of her acting depth as the wife in a blood-soaked descendant of The Fall of the House of Usher. It bombed justifiably.

4/10