What’s it about? Guillermo del Toro has so many projects stuck in the pipeline (including dozens that are swirling around his fertile imagination) that it almost feels strange when one comes to fruition. Crimson Peak is the Mexican director’s next movie; a supernatural thriller about a young author called Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who goes to live atop a blood-red English mountain with her enigmatic new husband, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston).
Who’s in it? The magnificent Mia Wasikowska (Stoker) is playing Edith, with Marvel’s best villain Tom Hiddleston as her lover Sir Thomas. It also stars Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) as Thomas’s sister, Lady Lucille, and Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim) as a doctor in love with Edith. They’re joined by characters actors like Leslie Hope (24), Jim Beaver (Deadwood), Doug Jones (Hellboy) and Burn Gorman (Torchwood).
Best dialogue? “A house as old as this one becomes, in time, a living thing…”
Best moment? Probably the shot of Edith’s bath tap running with blood, before the angle adjusts to see a transparent phantom floating outside the room.
What’s the buzz? After an early screening, horror maestro Stephen King described it as “gorgeous and just fucking terrifying.” The film does have parallels to The Shining, with an author becoming trapped in a remote, haunted building during a harsh winter. Only there’s a lot more overtly supernatural spooks and it’s set in the Victorian era.
Worst-case scenario? Another beautiful production with great actors doing their best to look scared by digital ghosts, and not be upstaged by the impressive sets.
Best-case scenario? A creepy ghost story Del Toro masterclass in a genre he loves (The Devil’s Backbone), but hasn’t directed much of during his action-heavy Hollywood career (Blade II, Hellboy, Pacific Rim).
When does it premiere? 16 October 2015 in the UK and U.S.