Del Toro’s brilliance is unquestionable but his talent doesn’t always come through with a completely credible experience. This one is somewhere close to brilliant but in experience falls well short.

Crimson Peak is not for everyone, but the mood is set very early on. Give in to Del Toro’s libretto of lunacy and you will revel in something quite astounding. It is the kind of film that several Indian filmmakers, forever mired by convention, should be made to watch in order to understand how the truly gifted can celebrate classicism instead of being trapped by it. I, for one, can pledge that if a knife were ever lodged deep through my cheekbone, I’d want Guillermo Del Toro to yank it out — regardless of consequence, he’d make it worth looking at.

Sharpe’s sister Lucille also takes an instant dislike for Edith; she thinks the latter is ‘just a child’. There’s plenty of doom and Gothic gloom in here but at its heart, this is a beautiful story (albeit a rather unusual one) of courage, and love.

“It is not a ghost story. It is a story with a ghost in it,” this oft-repeated line in the film is a reminder that director Guillermo Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” is difficult to slot into any defined category or genre. The film is a psychosexually violent romance with ghosts dramatically emerging from the floors, doors and eerie hallways.Never entirely satisfying as a horror drama or a romance spectale, the film is visually dazzling. But overall, the film does not tug at you emotionally.