Previously in movie yelling: Mad Max and Jupiter Ascending
Nicole: Okay, let’s just get this out of the way IMMEDIATELY: obviously this is the greatest movie ever made.
Mallory: I think at ten different points throughout the movie one or both of us leaned over to the other and said “This is the best movie I have ever seen.”
Nicole: It was really important to me that we be of one mind, bc if we had seen it with a person who didn’t UNDERSTAND how good this movie was, I would have garroted them with my purse strap and an unwrapped tampon
Mallory: WHICH WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THIS EXCEEDINGLY VIOLENT MOVIE.
This movie DELIVERED on all points. It gave us exactly what it promised.
Someone on Twitter described it as “Jane Eyre plus Eddie Murphy’s ‘The Haunted Mansion’ and that is what it was. No more, no less.
Nicole: It was like the inside of a Gusher candy. It was perfect. All fabrics were either completely transparent or made of horsehair. Also: one of the BEST murders I have ever seen, hands-down, and perhaps a conscious homage to the curb-stomping in American History X?
Mallory: OH MY GOD, YES. Sink-stomping.
Nicole: I love that my one vain attempt to avoid spoilers has been immediately shoved aside, and now we can spoil with a right good will. INCEST SIBLINGS MURDER IN BLOOD CASTLE!
Mallory: I mean, if you want to avoid Crimson Peak spoilers, do not read articles about Crimson Peak
problem solved
Nicole: That seems fair.
Mallory: I love how, like, the first half of the movie
I kept thinking, “Sure, these siblings are creepy, and it’s so obvious there must be a BIGGER secret, like they’re actually married and pretending to be siblings, or something.”
but no
they were just fucking.
Nicole: NOPE! Because this movie never disappoints! It knew what we wanted: incest siblings. Pale, wan incest siblings. Genes that needed airing out.
Now, let’s talk about Tom.
Mallory: I WANTED TO KICK HIS TEETH IN SO MUCH.
Nicole: I finally understand Tom Hiddleston as a Thing now, which I never had before! So spindly and greasy, so un-Thor.
You were SO MEAN about him.
He changed!
Mallory: Remember how I kept hissing “KICK HIS TEETH IN” whenever he was on screen?
Nicole: You really did! And my lip was wobbling and I wanted to redeem him so badly.
Mallory: uuugh, his courtship of Edith was so FEEBLE
Nicole: He changed his mind about being terrible at LEAST 15 minutes before the end
Mallory: with his shitty Lyle Lanley business plan
“I’ve sold clay machines to Ogdenville, Brockway, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!”
Nicole: I WAS THE ONE who pointed out the Monorail thing!
IT WAS ME
Mallory: he practically FAINTED every time someone disagreed with him
Nicole: You are a GRIFTER.
Yes, he did.
Mallory: he was such a SAD grifter too
Nicole: He waltzed so divinely!
Mallory: BULL SHIT
Nicole: Just waltzin’ around
Mallory: that candle went out MULTIPLE TIMES
Nicole: GASP!
ACTUAL GASP
Mallory: he held out the candle, all “a true waltz is so smooth and fluid a candle held in the hand of the lead dancer will never go out”
and it VISIBLY FLAMED OUT multiple times during their shitty dance
he was just so, wan in his pursuit of her, wan in his keeping of her, and wan when he finally resisted his sister-lover-mother-killer
he did everything quarter-assedly, like he had spiritual anemia
Nicole: Oh, can we talk about how sadly underused that cunty lady whose son was the Channing Tatum-looking doctor who wasn’t Channing Tatum was?
Mallory: I have nothing to say about her!
Nicole: Okay, Lucille was draining his essence via those terrible handjobs
Mallory: yeah, let’s hold off on my Hiddleston yelling until we get through the rest first
Nicole: He didn’t have the vim to rebel
Mallory: WAIT
Nicole: Oh, good call, we can move things around
Mallory: first, Charlie Hunnam was definitely channeling Channing Tatum in this role
how is this not Channing?
Nicole: Very much so.
Mallory: and it definitely contributed to the WEIRDNESS that three of the four main characters were doing accents in reverse
Charlie is English but played an American, ditto Mia Wasikowska, and Jessica Chastain is American but did a bananas English lady accent the whole time
Nicole: The accents were a BEAUTIFUL mess. And then it was Scotsmen wall-to-wall back in Cumberland?
That old dude in the kilt who is around just long enough to say “the master’s been married for YEARS” and then wander off onto the moor or whatever
Mallory: for some reason the post office in Cumberland has a bridal suite?
Nicole: It was a charming lil love nest
oh, and when he looked like he was about to eat her out but didn’t??
Mallory: but it was also kind of great, I think, that Hiddleston and his sister were clearly OFF from minute one
Mallory: you KNOW they couldn’t do that for the rating
Nicole: I GUESS?
Mallory: “okay, dip your head vaguely in the direction of her cunt, kiss her thigh, and then get to Doin’ It”
“that’ll have to count”
Nicole: they had a dead red lady with an axe in her head!
Mallory: they had a CORPSE BABY
Nicole: then it’s just her rearranging her dress frantically for ten minutes
Mallory: but only implied cunnilingus
Nicole: We did see his butt.
It was okay.
Mallory: It was what it was, you know?
but it was great, the way everyone acted against their own best interests
like, the dad finds out these siblings are a Black Widow pair and he just…tells them he knows they’re evil
but also says “Nobody else knows!”
which gives them a really great chance to smash his head in
“I’m the only one who knows, so if anything were to happen to me, why, you’d get away with it all!”
Nicole: It was EXACTLY like when Ned Stark tells Cersei “oh, once your husband comes back, I’m telling him all your evil secrets!”
“so you should go now!”
Mallory: THIS HAD MANY GAME OF THRONES PROBLEMS
but I loved it, that’s what makes it feel like a fairy tale
of COURSE everyone is dumb and naïve
of COURSE Edith keeps drinking the OBVIOUSLY POISONED TEA
even though every time she drinks it she passes out for three days and wakes up coughing blood
Nicole: Oh, TOTALLY. Like, I know homes used to be draftier, too, but she looks up at the NO ROOF and is all “how magical!”
Mallory: and somehow leaves are falling through the roof even though there are CLEARLY NO TREES NEARBY
Nicole: Like, c’mon, now, I don’t think of myself as high-maintenance, but I would have told my manservant to put my trunk back on the carriage, bc we are staying at the Ritz until my contractor is done.
NO TREES
Mallory: this movie looked like a Silent Hill cutscene and an Emily the Strange journal cover had a goth baby
and I LOVED IT
Nicole: Oh, and there was no food at ALL.
Mallory: NO ONE ATE IN THIS MOVIE OR EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT EATING IT
Nicole: Food: 1. The poisoned porridge
Mallory: YES
horrible, distressing porridge
that’s it
Nicole: 2. The bread stuff in the pot that Lucille chucked at Edith bc she realized they had boned.
End of list!
Mallory: I love that the “evil incest” trope only appears in two kinds of families
INCREDIBLY RICH AND DEPRAVED NOBILITY
Nicole: Which, you know, there really should have been ONE decaying servant
Mallory: or horribly impoverished hill people
Nicole: YESSSS
Mallory: I feel like Jessica Chastain got to play a great sort of Mrs. Danvers role
with her big housekeeping keychain
she sort of was the evil servant?
Nicole: I very much want that keychain
Mallory: this movie was UNASHAMED in cribbing directly from Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Gaslight, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Bluebeard
Nicole: lol now I’m picturing her singing Ring of Keys from Fun Home
just FULL GOTH
I like Jessica Chastain SO much more now
Mallory: YES
she won this movie
Nicole: She was a woman of substance!
Mallory: 100%
she did so much acting!!!
Nicole: But were you not moved when Tom is all “I can’t wait for Edith to see my weird blood clay machine work for five minutes straight!” and Lucille is like “WAT” and he’s like “ummmmm so I can poison her all the faster?” but you KNOW he’s going soft on their plan.
Mallory: NO
OKAY
here it is
here is my THING
it is also my THING with Jaime in Game of Thrones
you cannot be HALF-in an incestuous murder sibling marriage
you are either IN or you are OUT
these two have killed their mother, possibly their father, at least four previous wives and Edith’s dad
all to keep their stupid incest clay machine going
which A of all, is stupid, they should have sold the house and travelled around the capitals of Europe TAKING TURNS being the black widow
Nicole: Lucille could totally have bagged herself a rich man.
Mallory: he could marry someone, they kill her and take her money, then move to a different city, where SHE marries someone, they kill him, etc
plus then I feel like it would have tamped down a little bit on her MURDEROUS JEALOUSY
Nicole: Oh, totes.
Mallory: but you can’t let your sister-lover commit all these murders for you and then sort of HALF-ASSEDLY back out at the last minute
here is the sum total of Tom Hiddleston’s good deeds in this movie
he stabs Charlie Hunnam SLIGHTLY LESS than he had to
and he burns the paper Edith signed granting him her fortune.
END. OF. LIST.
Nicole: LET’S TALK ABOUT THE STABBING PART
Nicole: When he said “you’re a doctor, tell me where” I definitely assumed he meant “tell me where I can stab you swiftly so you will die immediately and not be in pain”
Mallory: he does not SEND EDITH AWAY
he does not FIGHT HIS SISTER
he does not STOP HER FROM POISONING HIS WIFE
he just WANLY GETS STABBED
thank fucking GOD
I would never marry my brother
but if I DID
Nicole: When he said “you’re a doctor, tell me where” I definitely assumed he meant “tell me where I can stab you swiftly so you will die immediately and not be in pain”
Mallory: you can bet I would COMMIT to my choices
Nicole: I KNOW you would
You would never dither
Mallory: you can’t just sort of ghost out of your sibling marriage
you can do that after a third date with someone you have no mutual friends with
he’s trying to GHOST on his SISTER who MURDERED THEIR MOTHER TO PRESERVE THEIR SECRET
YOU CANNOT DO THAT
so when she stabbed him in his GORMLESS FACE, yes, I admit it, I cheered
now state your case
make your argument for his redemption
Nicole: well I guess I thought he was very romantic
when he carried her across the threshold
and the waltzing
and then he looked sad
I think this is why I have a husband and you are a magnificent Amazon woman who lives in a house without a man in it.
Because my heart immediately crumbled when he kissed Edith with genuine fervor and then Lucille ruined the moment.
Also, I’m very competitive and wanted to out-fuck his sister.
Mallory: “And then he looked sad.”
ROME, THOU HAST LOST THE BREED OF NOBLE BLOODS
Nicole: Like, please, you’re not going back to her now.
One night in the depot.
I’d fix her wagon.
Mallory: that man wouldn’t know fervor if it kicked him in the teeth.
he even LET LUCILLE STAB HIM IN THE FACE AND ALSO TO DEATH
because on some level
he KNEW he wasn’t fit to live
even his shitty GHOST was the bare minimum of helpful
Nicole: ughhhhhhooooogggg when he pulled that thing out of his own face
ujizog’zpfgjzjgffggfgggg
Mallory: he just DISTRACTED Lucille long enough for EDITH to kill her
Nicole: Okay, his ghost self was bad.
Just stood there, wanly.
Mallory: “As little as possible.” – Tom Hiddleston’s ghost
ghosts are not bound by the Prime Directive, my man!
Nicole: Good for Edith, though, since she’s supposed to be poisoned and sedated and fell two stories onto a stone floor
Mallory: NON-INTERFERENCE IS NOT A WORTHY GOAL IN THIS SITUATION
oh yeah, she immediately overcomes all of those things
Mia Wasikowska is so charming!
Nicole: What kind of poison IS this?
Mallory: Her face is so great!
Nicole: Just a lovely face.
Mallory: I can definitely see why he started to transfer his affection from his sister
Nicole: And DIVINE sleeves.
And she had that air of being genuinely interested in his stupid hobby farm.
Men love that.
Mallory: but no, it’s the same with Jaime, we’re supposed to be chill with this guy and just look past the twincest (WHICH, HE PARALYZED A CHILD OVER THAT) because he starts having conversational chemistry with Brienne?
Nicole: You feign genuine interest in a man’s hobby blood farm, he’s yours.
Mallory: “Oh, Tom Hiddleston seems VAGUELY less interested in his sister’s handjobs now that he’s fucked his wife? This marriage CAN be saved!”
Nicole: Lucille has a very strong personality, and was two years older.
That makes a big difference, especially when you’re in your thirties
Mallory: up to about eight hours before he died, he was still throwing bones at his sister, this is not a man who was salvageable
oh I’m not arguing Lucille wasn’t effable
she super was
I’m just saying if we’re going to give him credit for making an actual, active choice
I’m going to need to see more commitment from him
if he had lived
he would have played the two of them against each other for the REST OF THEIR LIVES
“I’m really close to making a decision, honestly.”
“This is really hard for ME, you know? I’m in love with two women!”
he would DITHER INTO THE GRAVE
I loathe ditherers
Nicole: We’re clear, though, that I would have CLUNG to him in the night so he couldn’t wander off to Lucille
And then not gone WALKING THE HALLS
Mallory: also, Tom Hiddleston has the sort of fey, feline beauty that makes me just want to smear him in his own blood.
Nicole: with a CANDELABRA
Mallory: I want to crush him to see if there’s a single vertebrae underneath his gormless exterior
oh, also, the walls kept oozing red clay, which was awesome
Nicole: he’s a little lamb who has been bruised by a mean lady
Mallory: that’s not related but it was cooool as all hell
Nicole: yeah, loved the walls A +++++ walling
Mallory: He deserves to be CRUSHED, not bruised.
Nicole: This is a movie where I DO think having a firearm would have been helpful
Like, in her handbag, or her voluminous sleeves
Or if Charlie had brought one with him
Mallory: YES.
Not for nothing is England called “Survivable Knifecrime Island.”
my last furious Hiddleston thought:
you can be, okay, a conflicted vampire
“Oh, I HAVE to drink blood, but I don’t want to be a monster!”
You cannot be a conflicted Bluebeard!
“Oh, it’s so awful, how my sister keeps poisoning women on my behalf.” THEN STOP BUYING HER POISON, BUD.
That said
I have not been able to STOP thinking about how furious I am at him, though
which obviously means he was very successful at creating a memorable character
and also that I am perhaps less resistant to his weepy charms than I want to believe myself
Thomas Sharp: consumptive milksop I am maybe fascinated by?? I’ll have to kick him in the teeth a few thousand times to make sure.
Nicole: You have a ten year old dog who pees in the house, I feel like you would relent to him eventually.
Mallory: uuuugh he DOES, sometimes
and you can’t correct an old dog like you can a puppy, so I don’t really know what to do
Nicole: Like you would yell SACK THE FUCK UP THOMAS at him, but then you would help him find venture capital.
Mallory: if anyone has tips, let me know in the comments
I take him outside like every hour so he’s pretty good
but it still happens every other day or so
Nicole: you walk him a BUNCH
Mallory: I mean, he’s not CONSTANTLY going
I think it’s more out of nervousness than incontinence?
but I’m not a dog piss expert
Nicole: It’s good that we’re at your parents’ house, they sprung for the stainproofing on the carpets.
Mallory: and at least I have hardwood/tile floors at my house, so cleanup is fairly easy
IDK, if Tom Hiddleston’s character were a fictional dog, I’d be angry with it all the time
but I’m nicer to dogs than to men, so
Nicole: definitely
Mallory: There were ghosts in this movie!
Nicole: RED ONES
BLACKY RED ONES
Mallory: Her mom’s ghost could see the future, but the other ones mostly couldn’t!
Nicole: REDDY BLACK ONES
end of list
Mallory: AND A LITTLE DOG THAT JESSICA CHASTAIN MURDERED
Nicole: just “this sucks!”
“I hate being dead!”
Mallory: Which, again, I am against dog murder, but at least she STANDS for something
DO SOMETHING
Nicole: You were all “what happened to the dog?”
Mallory: if you’re going to be evil, BE EVIL and have a GOOD TIME WITH IT
Nicole: and I was like “um she strangled him”
quietly
Mallory: this is why I love season 2 Spike and hate all forms of Angel
Nicole: Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, don’t mope.
Own it.
Mallory: kill Slayers! Have a bonkers girlfriend you destroy the world for!
Torture nuns! Kill your mom!
OWN YOUR CHOICES.
THIS IS EVERYTHING I HOPED IT WOULD BE.
Please, let us gather in this space to discuss
1. Our newly discovered ~thing~ for Tom Hiddleston. Because I too did not really Get It until this movie and then there was his ~English Countryside~ and I GET IT NOW
2. How terrible this movie would have been with Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Stone.
3. WAIT, HOW HAVE WE NOT DISCUSSED WHEN LUCILLE TRIED TO GIVE EDITH THE KAMA SUTRA WITH WHAT I THINK WAS A DRAWING OF A THREESOME ON IT? BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE 100% BEEN DOWN WITH THE THREE OF THEM GETTING IT ON.
Also, remind me to never, EVER piss off Mallory.
OH MY GOD YES for no. 2. I like them both okay and everything, but this cast was the best cast.
I am pretty sure I would have skipped the movie (or at very least, wait to watch it at home) if it’d had Cumberbatch. I like Emma Stone, but not in this, no way.
I say this as a huge Cumberbatch fan (as clevermanka knows): HIddleston was so much better of a choice for this movie.
I mean, I think Benedict should do a horror movie at some point? Maybe? But not this one. Tom was perfect.
Oh my god, was it really a threesome? I couldn’t see the image all that well. That is just delightful. Oh my goodness, yes. AND YES.
I ALSO WAS HOPING FOR A THREESOME. And then I remembered I was watching a mainstream movie.
[goes to write fanfic]
OH MY GOD, I cannot believe I forgot about the porn book locked in the library. “Oh, hey new sister-in-law, let’s check out some FORCE-EDGE PAINTING PORN together. This is called a ’69’ and I’ve already done it with your husband.”
I think that she gave the book to Edith because she suspected that Thomas and Edith were sleeping together, and wanted to check based off Edith’s reaction.
EDIT…I feel like everyone else realized this a lot faster than I did. Consequences of being ace?
This movie ending in a threesome would have been an EXCEPTIONAL plot twist. Also, Edith and Jessica Chastain teaming up to murder Hiddles gormless ass once he had perfected the clay-digger would have been delightful.
That would have been the most hilarious twist-ending of all time. They kill Tom Hiddleston’s jellyfish-spined brother/husband and then Edith ends up dominating Lucille forever in a weird reversal of power.
It would have been SO TERRIBLE with Benedict Cumberbatch. I’ve never seen Emma Stone in anything so I can’t judge on that.
(I’m seeing the film this weekend but went ahead and read the article because duh, the moment I watch that trailer I knew the brother and sister were committing incest and that the sister was a murderer. It’s GOTH.)
…is English Countryside the euphemism for butt?
I believe that phrase was coined by one Stephen Colbert last Friday.
I have not yet seen this movie but here is the thing. Mallory NAILS Hiddles’ appeal with this:
“Mallory: also, Tom Hiddleston has the sort of fey, feline beauty that makes me just want to smear him in his own blood.”
Yes. That is why.
As far as no. 3 is concerned, Lucille demonstrates in that scene a level of bitchiness that I hope to achieve one day. Like, it’s such a dick move, and you can just see her thriving on Edith’s thwarted dreams. I love her, against my better judgement.
They also cribbed pretty heavily from Notorious, definitely with the key stuff.
I’d argue that the key thing is very much in line with the Victorian Angel of the house trope, where having all the keys means that you are in control and the head of the house in a benign and caring way. Lucille plays the role but is actually the opposite, because her care is literally poisonous. Her care of the house and ownership of the keys comes to represent her ability to control what happens in her domain, so when Lucille loses the key, it represents her loss of control over the situation.
Interestingly, most of the scenes take place in areas of the house that would be generally considered the domain of women (parlor, kitchen, bedroom) with the exception being the cellar (Ghost town) and the attic workroom (dudely space).
ALL ABOUT THAT VICTORIAN ANGEL HOUSE SYMBOLISM.
(my bff saw the movie last night and I haven’t gotten a chance to flail at her yet).
But the attic does tie in nicely with the madwoman in the attic theme, or in this case, mad*children* in the attic?
Oh it so totally does. Attics are where dudes go to work or where the secrets are kept.
OR SIBLINGS GO TO BONE.
Mallory, do you only give him water on a set schedule?
Your dog, I mean. And also Tom Hiddleston. Definitely not Channing Hunnam.
No! Should I?
I went through a similar thing with my aged dog last summer. She’d spent her whole life as a Hoover Dam of endocrinology. But then the piddles began.
It took a little practice to get the schedule right, but giving her water at predictable times of the day also made her pee at predictable times. Once we got that figured out, it helped with the accidents.
I read a Joss Whedon interview that claimed the same thing worked with Tom Hiddleston. But Channing just stores it up and pees vindictively.
Good luck!
I had a dog that peed all the time and it turned out he had salt diabetes. Which is a thing! We switched him to low salt food and the peeing stopped.
Oh yeah. Definitely check for that kinda thing too. Esme got tested for UTIs too. But in the end, it was just Old Dog Bladder
I was going to say check his salt intake and get his kidneys checked! It might just be that he can’t process salt to well anymore and its making him super thirsty, so lots of peeing. But also lots of peeing is a sign of kidney problems (IIRC, I am not a vet, just an animal person with a geriatric terrier), if you can check the colour of his pee as well, it will be of interest to the vets if there’s kidney issues.
My geriatric dog can only eat soft food now, so mother sometimes gives him cooked ham, which causes him to drink copious amounts of water and then pee A LOT. The good thing about older dogs is that they’re better at communicating when they need to go outside than puppies, Fred will do everything in his power to let you know that he needs to pee (barking, growling, looking longingly at the door etc), and if you ignore him he’ll vengefully go and pee by the door. Its his way of saying ‘See! See! I told you I needed to go.’
Maybe try a puppy pad for Murphy, he might not use it, but if he does then at least he has an option for when he can’t go outside!
YES I AM FOR ALL OF THIS.
I loved this movie more than I love many members of my family and also waffles which I love enormously, so that is saying something. I loved Mia’s face and HAIR and butterfly sleeves and gumption and stabbiness and shovel hitting and her faaaace. I loved Jessica Chastain’s BATSHITTERY and how much she COMMITTED. The won the movie and my heart. I loved that the murder lover siblings were SO OBVIOUSLY EVIL and no one got it except for the dad who had to hire Burn Gorman.
Also, while I am not super infatuated with Tom Hiddleston, I totally get why Edith would fall for him even though he is obviously evil and a grifter, because yes he is gormless but also super charming and he is delicately pretty. Like a vase that would shatter if you touched it so it is kept in a big furniture with display shelves behind glass. Also, I think that him being weak makes sense for the character, since we don’t know how old tthey were when the incest begain. 34/32 isn’t much of an age difference, but if they were young, it could be, and then he never grew out of that pattern and never had to fight because Lucielle was a DRAGON IN A BLACK DRESS I LOVE HER SO. I never thought we would get a Mrs. Danvers for this generation. I am so happy I was wrong.
Also I really want a sequel, with Edith and Charlie Hunnam working together to HUNT GHOSTS because you know they are both about that shit. Also also, SHE GOT HER WISH TO BE A WIDOW. That is the happiest ending of all.
SHE GOT HER WISH TO BE A WIDOW.
I completely forgot that line. Thank you for reminding me! Ah god, I love this movie more and more.
At the end I was like “YEAH, LIVIN’ YOUR DREAM.”
Re: Edith’s gumption, everyone in the theatre cheered when she killed Lucille with the shovel and said, “I heard you the first time.” DAAAAAAAMMMMNNNNN
“Also, I think that him being weak makes sense for the character, since we don’t know how old tthey were when the incest begain. 34/32 isn’t much of an age difference, but if they were young, it could be, and then he never grew out of that pattern and never had to fight because Lucielle was a DRAGON IN A BLACK DRESS I LOVE HER SO.”
I think you’re on to something here. That their relationship maybe could have started when he was really young, and possibly not even taller than him yet, and possibly not have been completely consensual, or at least with a strong element of coercion in it. Lucille is a force of nature, she’s got such a powerful personality that she’d steamroller over anyone else.
I also get why Edith would fall for him, as she clearly had a thing for ye old English aristocracy with her ghost story and her big book of English houses: she looked his house when she was home alone, remember. It made a huge amount of sense to me that, as an imaginative, writerly sort without much real interest for romantic relationships, she ended up getting infatuated and marrying Thomas because she liked the idea of being the mistress of a big Gothic pile with a brooding English husband who dresses well. I think we’ve all had times where we’ve fallen in love with what someone represents, or what we associate them with more than the person themselves, and I really liked seeing that on film.
Did she actually have a thing for aristocracy? I was surprised by how quickly she fell for him considering that her first comment about him was to call him a parasite and I wouldn’t have thought compliments on her book/dancing would be enough to overwhelm her clear contempt so quickly.
Actually yeah, that’s a good point. Duh, totally forgot that. She definitely had a thing for Gothic houses though.
According to Charlie Hunnam’s newspaper clip thingy, the mother was murdered when Lucille was 14 and Thomas was 12. And Lucille claims that she killed their mother because she “discovered” them…so they started an incestuous affair when he was 12 years old? Unless this is something the movie writers forgot about, then that is super super creepy. Like how do I even discuss consent in this matter.
So this is why I don’t want to kick him in the teeth. Because you get the sense that it’s always been an emotionally abusive and DEFINITELY coercive relationship between him and his sister, she was his only blood relative left from the time he was a child, and he’s spent his entirely life just kind of obeying his orders and following her like a puppy. And he is terrified of losing her again.
Interestingly enough, that also parallels the dynamic between Cersei and Jaime on Game of Thrones, although it seems a bit fairer since they’re twins and of the same age.
Am I discussing the spectrum of incestuous consent? Ok, time to bow out.
I really don’t think it’s something the writers forgot, I think that was completely deliberate and meant to make you go ‘wait a second…’ The implication I got from it is actually that they probably started before he was 12. So yeah, everyone in that family was completely awful.
Oh yeah, that was so coercive that I can’t even. And when they were talking about killing the previous wives and doing the same to edith, Thomas very much had this “I’m still that little boy” face going. I mostly wanted to get him into a good counselor’s office, not kick his face in.
ALSO he was so into sex with Edith at the post office. Face and vibe were night and day to how he responded to Lucille.
Right? So gleeful, so “omg sex is FUN?” Poor little beastie. He never had a chance at being a person.
(Full disclosure: I’m also a Loki sympathizer, so fwiw.)
SHE GOT HER WISH TO BE A WIDOW! I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THE FORESHADOWING THERE!
So much foreshadowing! “The ghosts are metaphors for the past”. “I have to put a love story in – just a few chapters”
Also, I think that him being weak makes sense for the character, since we don’t know how old tthey were when the incest begain. 34/32 isn’t much of an age difference, but if they were young, it could be, and then he never grew out of that pattern and never had to fight because Lucielle was a DRAGON IN A BLACK DRESS I LOVE HER SO.
I agree! IIRC, the movie said that Lucille was 14 when she straight up axe murdered her mother to protect their love and he was 12, which would mean that they have had a sexual relationship since Tom Hiddleston’s character was a child. So I’ll agree that he was frustratingly passive, but he also had been locked into a really unhealthy power dynamic with his sister since, like, grade school.
This is 100% better than actually seeing the movie.
YES!
And as someone who really really wishes she WOULD’T be scared shitless watching this movie, (I’d be 100 % convinced red-black ghosts would wait behind every door when I got home) I can’t imagine any better preparation to go than this highly excellent movie yelling!
But the ghosts weren’t malevolent! They may be scary LOOKING, but all they do is try to helpfully alert you to any murder plots in your general vicinity.
Even the kindest, sweetest little ghost would make me a trembling mess huddling in a corner, before they had even started pointing their friendly white finger towards the arsenic-filled sugar bowl. *sad face*
I’m with you. Would love to see it, would not love how I would be unable to be alone in my apartment afterwards.
It IS a problem!
Honestly, I am terrible at horror movies and am the most ridiculously wimpy person to see them in the cinema, but I was howling with laughter after the first two blacky reddy ghosts. They totally stop being scary.
That’s good to hear! I DID laugh at the red skull-ghost peeking out from behind a door in the hallway in a very BOOO! kind of way, in that clip from the movie.
Oh man, the one in the hall closet was the only time I actually screamed out loud in the theater! But yeah, my ghost tolerance definitely increased as the movie went on.
Also, I don’t think this is spoilery, because I still have close to 0 idea of what this movie is about, apart from murderous incest siblings, which was taken care of in the first paragraph anyway.
YES I LOVE THIS
But I was pretty sympathetic to poor Thomas’s plight after Lucille got to talking a bit more about their childhood. I saw the incest thing coming a mile away but I understood her as a sexual predator and Thomas wasn’t exactly a happy, willing participant in their relationship. This might be my Hiddeston boner talking, though? We’re going on four years together and I have a certain amount of loyalty, here.
I’m with you. Like his entire family was fucked up in terrible ways (abusive father, horrible mother, sociopath predator sister), I’d be a spineless inventor trying to appease my batshit sister too so she didn’t murder anyone.
Yes, I did too.
Totally agreed – I saw her as the predator and him as being under her control for most of the story.
SO MUCH THIS
I am apparently the ONLY person who didn’t see the incest twist coming. My friend berated me at length. “Where did you THINK he was when she kept waking up to an empty bed?” I don’t know, but it’s very obvious in retrospect. My main takeaway from this movie (which I LOVED) was that if Tom Hiddleston were my brother, I might sleep with him too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I haven’t seen the film yet and now I don’t want to because it won’t be as good as this.
And yet, and yet–even Mallory and Nicole can’t supplant visuals of the Hiddle-bum.
I loved that the dog was not offed on-screen! (RIP dog from Babadook) He might have survived! That dog made it in the snow, maybe he’s still alive! I want to believe!!
I can see a hundred people die horrible onscreen deaths but if ONE ANIMAL bites it I am OUT. I realize these are not the best priorities but there we are.
I’m sure you have seen this website but for anyone who hasn’t: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/
I HAVE NOT. Thank you!
My high school English teacher showed us Apocalypse Now in class and told us we were all sick when we were meh with the humans getting shot and bombed but wailed when the dog died.
he survived being killed the first time. I totally bet he survived. Or maybe as a ghost? but that would bum me out because the ghosts had NO CHILL
The dog from Babadook was genuinely upsetting. The rest of the movie was also upsetting, but I was several extra kinds of NOT OK with the dog part.
Only tangentially related, but if you want some dirty blood-smeared female-gaze-y non-milksop Hiddleston, make sure to find a way to watch his Coriolanus at the National Theatre. Not sure if it’s on video yet, but they’re still doing encore showing in various movie theaters, looks like. http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/…
Hear, hear! I saw this twice. It’s amazing, and Deborah Findlay, who plays his mother, is just jawdroppingly good.
oh my god, she is the literal best part of that entire production and I’m an unabashed fangirl for Tom Hiddleston and afterwards I was like “DID YOU SEE DEBORAH FINDLAY SHE WAS THE BEST.”
Everyone in it was AMAZING and Hiddleston wore VERY TIGHT PANTS.
That was the thing that starte my Hiddles-crush. Did not get it at all until that.
I saw that play livestreamed into an American theatre last February and OH MY GOD. It’s phenomenal. Every actor/actress in the show was ON POINT.
I’m gonna throw my vote in for “only lovers left alive” in which he is literally a vampire. Also he’s married to Tilda Swinton.
I LOVE that movie it is the best. AND it has Mia Wasikowska in it, as Tilda’s bratty younger sister and she is so, so perfect. All of them are perfect.
I want to see it so bad but they aren’t showing it in Boston proper. Coriolanus is my favorite – so DRAMATIC and there will be HIDDLESTON and BLOOD.
ummm if you’re free on November 22…. I will probably be driving down to Providence for this, and I am more than willing to turn it into a Toast caravan!
I was trying to figure out which of my friends would be most likely to indulge my whims and come with me, but offering rides to internet strangers is so much easier(?).
A. I love that attitude, that attitude is right and just and proper. Internet strangers = best of people. (At least on the Toast.)
B. Sadly I’ll be flying to Atlanta on the 22nd. Well not sad, it will be fun but you know what I mean.
Ah that is too bad! Atlanta sounds fun, too, though.
Back to my drawing board of friends/potential victims in this crusade…
Ahhhh they’re showing it in theatres? Brb off to find where I can watch this….
It took me a while to figure it out, so in case it helps others: http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/…
oh man, I wanted to see this at the time bc I’m deeply in love with Hadley Fraser <333 I didn’t know they were still showing it! & the closest one is an hour away, but tbh that’s prooobably worth it. Thank you!
I went to see this at the original movie theatre live thingo. I LOVED the production but holy christ I hated that play. Roman imperialist propaganda filtered through English Elizabethan colonial/feudalistic propaganda? NO THANKS. I didn’t even enjoy the FREAKING SHOWER SCENE because I was too busy mulling over how this is why democracies exist.
Also [spoilers for this hundred’s of year’s old play] this made me realise why I was reading about Mallory enjoying hiddles getting what’s coming – basically the only part of Corialanus I enjoyed was the end, where he gets killed to death. THATS WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING AN ARSEHOLE TO EVERYONE yes good. The people I went with were all ‘oh no’ and I was like ‘YES MORE STABBING’. So I know for sure that I can both enjoy hiddles and enjoy his terrible character getting comeuppance.
“Survivable Knifecrime Island.”
TOAST THEME PARK
Nicole: Like, please, you’re not going back to her now.
One night in the depot.
I’d fix her wagon.
This is why I love you, Nicole.
*Pterodactyl screaming*
NEEDED MORE VELVET. EVERYTHING, COVERED IN VELVET.
AND BLOOD CLAY STUFF.
I’d drape myself in velvet if it was socially acceptable.
Why should that stop you?
It can be dangerous. I had a couple velvet dresses and like four or five times my boss walked in on my just idly stroking myself cos they felt so good…
Is there any more velvet in the world? I thought they used it all.
I loved this movie so much I am going to see it a second time tonight. It was like watching an hour and a half of pornography. Costume porn, scenery porn, architecture porn, Tom Hiddleston’s bare ass (actual porn), ghosts…like there is literally nothing left to want out of a movie, ever
Music pornography, too! The score matched the sets and costumes and atmosphere perfectly.
OH MY GOD THE MUSIC. YES.
like idk about anyone else but I left that theater on opening night as if I had just mainlined MDMA and Red Bull after having six straight orgasms. I have never felt so TRANSCENDENTLY ALIVE.
Totally. We walked out of the theatre basically high-fiving each other, and I was perplexed as hell the next day by people saying “it wasn’t that scary.” The marketing campaign trying to make this look like a horror is doing it a grave disservice. Let it be its rich, rotting, beautiful, gothic self!
I went with someone not well-versed in Victorian Ghost Story/Gothic tropes and they were insisting all the while that this movie was TERRIFYING, which I didn’t understand at all. This story is not at all about the ghosts. The ghosts are just a part of set decoration, like the giant hole in the roof of the manor, and the crumbling banisters on the stairs.
Edith says more than once that her story is not about the ghosts. Also, I love her for not just seeing something scary and running off into the night. She investigates and confronts the bloody spectres.
ALSO tbf I was very scared at times
YES THE MUSIC. I really, really want to play that score with an orchestra I mean can you imagine. And the whole thing is so Emily Bronte I bet the viola parts would be fantastic. (or, as fantastic as viola parts get.)
Viola parts with 48 consecutive bars of WONDERFUL repeated quavers! Repeated like quavers have NEVER been repeated before!
I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m thinking about seeing it again, but the close ups of insects eating each other have me reconsidering. Also I’ve been having to sleep with the light on.
Augh thank you for that warning 🙁 Insect close-ups noooooo
I absolutely loved that the only nudity in the film was male and the sex scene ended with who would normally be the ingénue on top.
Seconded sister, seconded!
I am annoyed that we are supposed to think Thomas was redeemed because no! He was not! He killed and helped kill lots of people. He stole their money. He is not better than Lucille. Like, yes, when she was 14 maybe he had no choice but that was 20 years ago already, you had lots of wives.
Also Doc Alan you should have like made a move EVER before she married someone else and moved to a roofless mansion. Edith was gorgeous and just because people in Buffalo were judgemental it isn’t like she was not going to have other choices. Maybe stand up to your mother.
I really liked the movie, even though — especially because — I thought it was supposed to have been horror. (Thanks, misleading trailer.) Gothic romance ghost story is much better, but I saw it with the wrong person who did not understand early enough it wasn’t horror and in any case didn’t know the conventions.
But Edith flat-out wasn’t interested in Alan! I think he had made his move, years ago, and she just wanted to be friends and he accepted that and still risked his life for her, expecting nothing because he knew she thought he was boring but it was okay and he was willing to risk his life for her anyway and I loved that about him.
He would just get in the way of her fabulous widowhood, anyway.
Well I absolutely do not get that reading from the movie at all, but I like it so I’ll move it to head-canon.
I didn’t take from it that he was redeemed, though I can see why you might. But when he was like “We can all live happily ever after” to Lucille, I thought it showed how really, he was completely spineless and didn’t deserve someone as great as Edith: he deserved being stabbed in the face and tied to his awful ghost house forever.
Well I agree that he was a spineless jerk who didn’t deserve Edith, that goes without saying, but I still think the movie wanted us to feel he had less culpability and I don’t think his history affected his culpability as an adult.
Yeah OK, I see your point. I still don’t think he was *redeemed*, but you’re right, you are supposed to feel kind of sorry for him.
I don’t think he was supposed to be redeemed by his actions at the end of the movie, but the revelation that he has never NOT been abused certainly goes a long way towards mitigating his culpability for his actions. The whole “marry heiresses for money then murder them” plot was most certainly not his idea and the whole “I’m going to stab you because if I don’t do it she will” pretty much exemplifies how helpless he feels. I don’t particularly like his character, but I can see how someone who was abused by his parents until their deaths and then consistently sexually abused by his murderous, domineering older sister from the age of about 10 onwards wouldn’t really be able to assert himself as an adult.
I think I just lack a certain sympathy for him — his sister was also abused by her family, and wasn’t exactly treated well by him either. (She wasn’t fond of all his marrying.) And this doesn’t make her a not-monster! She was a monster. So was he.
I enjoyed the character and feel sorry for him… but not significantly more sorry than I feel for Lucille. I don’t think a two year age gap is big enough to make her the predator in a situation in which they had BOTH been locked in an attic all their lives and deprived of any idea of what normality even was.
It was an interesting exercise in “how much are we prepared to forgive Tom Hiddleston?” The answer in my household’s case being, “not *that* much, but quite a surprising amount.”
This far! No further!
yissssssssss
See, this is why I want Guillermo del Toro to do the movie version of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. Post-war Barcelona, lush gothic settings and themes and DARK DARK SECRETS AND MYSTERIES, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, the stalking of Julián Carax, a character who is possibly the devil…it would be glorious.
OH MY GOD YES HOW DO I MAKE THIS HAPPEN SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
Wait I need this immediately. And it has to actually be filmed in Barcelona. Hell, make it in Spanish with subtitles. It would be SO BEAUTIFUL.
I HAVE WANTED THE EXACT SAME THING FOR SO LONG AND AS USUAL I HAVE FOUND MY BRETHREN ON THE TOAST.
well now I have a BOOK recommendation for sure. 😛
We need to find out who owns the film rights and start a concerted social media campaign
Have not heard of this before but “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” makes me want to read it bad.
IF IT COULD UPVOTE THIS COMMENT MORE I WOULD
SotW was my favourite favourite book for years, and it is still high on the list and del Toro and YES
(googles The Shadow of the Wind) HOLY CRAP WHY DIDN’T SOMEONE TELL ME THERE’S A SPANISH VERSION OF HOUSE OF LEAVES (runs to library website to download)
Oh that would be amazing!
I had to stop reading this because I didn’t want my coworkers to hear me laughing.
I loved this movie. And this recap. But those weren’t Scottish accents, they were Northern English. Though I did initially read ‘Cumberland’ as ‘Cumbernauld’ in the on-screen text, which IS in Scotland and had me going WHAT WHY DO THEY KEEP SAYING ENGLAND. But later they said Cumberland pretty consistently and I realised I must’ve misread. ~mo
they weren’t SUPPOSED to be, maybe, but that Scottish bro was clearly in a kilt!!
I dunno about kilt boy – he could’ve been Scottish and I didn’t notice though I feel like I would’ve. I will return when we have watched it again and report on that! But everyone else was definitely Northern English, like, had proper Northern English accents, definitely not Scottish ones, was what I meant. I know ’cause after misreading Cumbernauld I was all ready to be offended at them treating part of Scotland like England (and also calling it England!) so I was listening out during the post depot scene and there wasn’t a single Scottish accent among ’em! 🙂
Berwicktweed Cumberland should TOTALLY have been in it.
I enjoyed 100% how useless every man in this movie turned out to be. Father — plays his hand too soon. Alan — why is he even in this movie except as a plot device? Thomas — totally useless, can commit neither to evil or good. The end fight scene was glorious.
My friend and I laughed until we wept at the cheekbone stabbing scene. I think the woman in front of us judged us a little. But it was too much and too wonderful! And then when he slowly pulled the knife out, I yelled, “Come on!” and we laughed even more.
It’s a wonderful melodramatic mess of a movie and I love it so much. I want to see it again.
Our whole theater laughed at that scene where Lucille scrapes the spoon around the porridge bowl. Like she’s trying to be all intimidating and mysterious but it’s just funny.
Even the blond all-American hard-working saviour got stabbed IMMEDIATELY. Like, within moments of showing up at the house.
YES! I laughed all the time, especially when the ghosts kept popping up.
Though to be fair, my friend next to kept screaming at every little movement and I think I started laughing to counteract some of it?
I laughed quite a bit when Thomas was like, “Let’s go out together! I’ll take you to the post office!”
That was definitely a good laughable moment.
That said… holy hells the post office sleep over scene was sexy perfection.
It was! I may have spent a lot of time today looking at the gifs from that scene in this post.
I wish I could read/write fanfic about her just convincing him that they shouldn’t go back to the murder house and just ditch his sister. Alas, there wouldn’t really be anywhere else for the story to go if that happened? But still. The look on his face as he’s just sort of throwing her skirts around everywhere? God.
Interesting point – I think all the agency did belong to the women throughout this movie (except that Thomas made the ONE fateful choice to go after Edith, the woman strong enough to topple the whole edifice) and that was just one more reason I felt so Bronte-ish about it.
YES TO EVERYTHING EVER.
I could go on for days about this movie and all the bits and homages and Hammer Horror and Corman and Hitchcock and The Innocents and guh and I am SO GLAD my Halloween media binge of choice this season has been older gothic movies. I came into that movie so damn ready and I’m still watching them now and it has gotten to the point where I am dreaming in gothic tropes. I am pretty sure Vincent Price even had a starring role in last night’s subconscious production.
(There was a woman who was thought to be long dead, but then she wasn’t and she was there in her glamorous townhouse being young and beautiful and leading flocks of impressionable young men to their doom and Vincent Price was being shouty at her and there was a blousey housekeeper and a handsome but ineffectual doctor of some sort and Roger Corman is apparently directing my dreams now.)
I need to see that darn movie again. This time on a screen bigger than my kitchen table. …Montpelier has a really tiny theater ok?
You have to write your dream movie, that sounds great.
My husband really wanted to see this, I had no preconceived notions going in. I had seen precisely one trailer, which set it up as conventional horror? I WAS SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. I was a total freak for Rebecca as a tween (don’t ask). The costumes, the dainty & ineffectual Hiddleston, literally everything. I love it. I might see it again in theatres, to be honest, I loved it that much.
A+++ for the Lyle Lanley reference. My coworker peeked at me from over her desk when I guffawed.
UghhHHhh I WANTED to love this in the same bedazzled garbagefire way I am fond of Jupiter Ascending — upon seeing trailers, I delightedly shrieked “this looks gothic as fuuuuuck!” — , but nO? Within the first few minutes I slunk down in my seat and hissed ‘husfrand, I have led us astray’ at Mr. Singstrix because I just could NOT with the Jaunty Period Score and the weirdly ineffectual portrayals of independent young miss / social climbers / social cuts / mishmash of accents, and then the over-the-top obvious everything, combined with the fact that nothing was actually particularly creepy. (Except the face stabbing; points to del Toro for that.) Also, listen, Dr. Boyfriend, if you’re American maybe try not saying ophthaLmologist.
I was actually really irritated with myself for mulling over the costuming choice to always portray Edith in gold/yellow (and emphasize the blondness of her hair when she was perpetually wafting about in billowing white nightgowns) when I finally realized it was about the FRAGILE YELLOW BUTTERFLIES OF AMERICA vs. the DARK, HEARTLESS MOTHS OF ENGLAND.
(Hang on, how are Americans supposed to say “ophthalmologist”?)
Many Americans drop the L, so it’s more “ahf-thuh-MAH-lo-gist” (or even “op-thuh-mologist,” dropping the “ph” digraph altogether) v. the Brit second syllable, which nearly rhymes with “shall.”
Pasting in the OED IPA for funsies: Brit./ˌɒfθalˈmɒlədʒɪst/ , /ˌɒpθalˈmɒlədʒɪst/ , U.S. /ˌɑpθə(l)ˈmɑlədʒəst/ , /ˌɑfθə(l)ˈmɑlədʒəst/
people say OPHthamologist? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM
It took me rather a long time to figure out how to spell ophthalmologist (esp. because: really, how often do I need to), given that I say “opthamologist.”
I DO, however, say diphthong instead of dip-thong.
Oh okay, I wondered if I was secretly British instead of American, but it turns out I’m a weird hybrid, since I pronounce the L but definitely do not rhyme the second syllable with “shall.”
NICE reading of the insects/clothing. Wish he had been able to resist the close ups of insects eating each other alive, though. I’ve written this elsewhere, but that felt a little indulgent to me in a movie that is already — in every conceivable way — indulgent. Most of it was great. Everything was beautiful.
Film-loving Mr. Singstrix eyerolled about that being a direct nod to David Lynch (see: opening scene of Blue Velvet, wherein you scan an idyllic green field only to zoom in and there’s DEATH AND DECAY EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS), which is in turn probably a nod to another director.
I can’t with this movie only because of the papillon. I have two and somehow, I knew from the trailer with the bathroom fetch scene that the dog was in danger. Run, little pappy, run!
OH MY GOD the dog breed is a papillon? I didn’t realize that. Freakin’ del Toro.
Yes! And they are so seldom in movies or TV that I would normally be excited….but I knew that poor baby was (fictionally) doomed.
http://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/papillon/
Wait wait papillon like French for “butterfly” I SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE
I know it isn’t at all a realistic hope, but I would really like a ‘Saboteur’ -style moratorium on dog death in movies. There’s so much awful awful dog murder/mutilation in real life these days that I can’t make myself watch a movie where a dog dies.
Can we please talk about how the back of the red dress Lucille was wearing looked both like a spine *and* like lady genitals at the same time? She was wearing a stylish vagina dentata. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.
Also, the dress she wore back at home all the time with the beads that looked like bugs were literally crawling all over her?
Everything about every costume was perfect.
That red dress was introduced at the perfect moment–with Lucille playing a waltz to a room full of diaphanous ditzes, with that back turned to them. That dress was going to eat them all.
OMG, THE DUAL SYMBOLISM OF THE VAGINA DENTATA DRESS.
Deadly and strong but super gendered victorian types of strength complete with the victorian fear of lady parts and the dual horror of those in general gothic terms. omgggggggggggggg.
I KNOW! I wish I could do one of these as a halloween costume, but it would be impossible to recreate how gorgeous everything was.
I say yes to all the lady-bit and insect dress references. I feel STRONGLY that this guy influenced the movie’s costuming in the best way possible: https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/emile-pingat He was as famous as Worth, but is less well known now…
Ladies, this is so brilliant that I am forced to stop lurking and start participating in Toast-comment-section-related shenanigans.
Also, coincidentally we watched Crimson Peak last night and decided that A) the real hero was the little dog and B) the HISHE spoof of this will feature Dead Dad coming back as a ghost immediately after his gruesome demise, point out his killer to his beloved daughter, and thus saving her from marriage and ending the movie prematurely. I mean, she sees everbody’s and their mom’s ghosts but not her own father? Please. So obvious.
YEAH WHERE WAS DADS GHOST
I didn’t even think of that! Surely he would have been able to give less cryptic and more helpful warnings!
We also had a lengthy discussion about the state of deterioration of the various ghosts (red-slimy vs black and skull-ly) and discovered that when you bury someone inside a coffin in clay, you don’t decay normally, you turn into liquid slush. That’s why the Allerdale Hall ghosts are all red and slushy, and Mom/Sis/Hiddles were more human and skeleton-like.
People looked at us strangely on the train while we discussed this. I cannot imagine why.
That is fascinating! Is the bacterial or oxygen content different or something?
As far as I understand, the clay seals the coffin completely airtight, so no bacteria, worms, etc. can get to the body to properly decay it. There are only the bacteria already living inside it (our guts!), which means that it basically digests itself. Fun! We couldn’t find out what happens if a body is buried directly in clay without a coffin though.
I figured Edith’s Mom was also a black ghost because she died from “Black Cholera” vs the red ghosts of Allerdale where the clay seeps into everything. She was also less corporeal the second time she showed up, maybe meaning that older ghosts/memories are more deteriorated.
I could seriously just talk about the ghosts for like an hour and half.
Oh, I don’t think I caught the Black Cholera thing… hm. And all the red ghosts are, of course, covered in clay, not blood. How silly would that be. (This totally unnatural RED also made the ghosts absolutely non-scary for me, who’s usually too much of a pussy for even the most gentle horror movie.)
But, if the older ghosts are more faded, why was Mom’s ghost positively skeletonized one day after her burial?
And how cool were those black smoky curls coming from their wounds? Wasn’t that pretty?
Oh, let’s keep talking about ghosts…
was going to comment “only women get to be ghosts” — but Tom Hiddleston. still, all the ghosts were coded as very feminine whether or not they were actually women. in fact, all of the horror was very feminine (nooks and crannies and rooms of the house = vaginas, thank you Freud) — normally I might have a problem with this, the feminine as horrible, except that all the light and goodness and life of the movie was feminine as well! (Charlie Tattum / Channing Hunnam was ineffective, Hiddleston is feminine, dad dies and is ineffective)
moral of the story: make everything feminine, make everything about women, and you can’t go wrong really.
Oh, and all the gushing clay-blood… was that whole goddamn house menstruating?
This is what I was going to say. The way I always interpreted those lyrics always made me a little unclear on what Frank’s identity is, exactly.
I have to assume that his ghost was wandering around his club, trying to yell at Charlie Hunnam when he showed up to check the long-fixed sink.
Jessica Chastain is a national treasure and she’s’ only been in movies since 2011. Madness. Just look at her IMDB.
The porridge spoon should win some sort of sound design award. So upsetting.
If all the movie had matched the intense zaniness of the last thirty minutes I would have liked it a lot more. The first act was so damn long and drawn out. Just get us to the titular mansion as fast as possible. Don’t dawdle in Buffalo for ages!
I LOVED HOW LONG THEY STAYED IN BUFFALO, Nicole and I were whispering to each other like “THIS IS SO GOOOOOD AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN GONE TO CRIMSON PEAK YET”
To be fair, I did enjoy the over the topness of the sink-stomping equally as much as you guys did.
Everything else about that part just left me cold, although I liked the scene where Lucille brushed the dead butterfly against Edith’s face.
GUYS I’m so CONFLICTED.
Jane Eyre is my favorite novel EVER, and Rebecca was my fave movie for a while and I eat Gothic up with a SPOON, & I want red velvet on EVERYTHING, but I’m not really great with gore?? Like people’s organs, or the part at the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark where that guy’s face melts with the blood pours out gave me nightmares a child and I still don’t watch that sequence?
so I REALLY WANT to see this movie, because, gothic elegance, etc…….but how bad IS the grossness? Is this an unforgiveably wussy question? I just want to commit to my choices, guys. 😛
It’s not too bad. There’s like two really bad moments, but It’s not as bad as say…an episode of hannibal. It’s like CSI level of gross.
Gothic romance/horror feature film: not as gory as an episode of an NBC sort-of procedural crime drama.
Bryan Fuller, ladies and gentlemen.
You’ll know when to close your eyes! And just keep them closed until the gross thing is over. It’s minimal grossness.
ok, “knowing when to close your eyes” is such a key thing though, so that’s good to know. I don’t have a lots of experience with horror movies, but the lack of ability to prep oneself for the gross things is a main part of my “no-thank-you.”
Oh man, every gross or scary moment is telegraphed like five minutes in advance, you’ll know.
You will 100% be able to know when to close your eyes, it could not be more obvious when something is going to happen.
I was able to close my eyes for the entirety of the scene in question. It was super obvious. 🙂
I feel you, squeamish friend. There’s no guts or arterial spray, but a lot of face trauma – a face is smashed in very thoroughly, a face is stabbed, there’s body stabbing that is somehow less upsetting to me than face stabbing, etc. I can’t really tell how exactly bad the face trauma is because as soon as it began my own face was in my hands, but my husband saw a little more and he said it was “pretty bad.”
Yeah, when the face smashing happens, cover your eyes until the scene ends. There’s a fairly close up shot of the remains of the face after the smashing. There’s also an “identify the body” scene in the morgue that is less detailed IIRC.
Mmmmmmm yes, face-trauma sounds *awful* ok, will bring friend to poke me when things get bad and lemme know when it’s over.
Definitely close your eyes when the dad is alone in the bathroom and do not open them until your friend signals the all-clear. Otherwise, like people said, the stabby parts are near the end and you’ll see them coming.
I mean, I’ve described it as about or less gory than an episode of Supernatural.
But yes, the face trauma is… a lot.
Thirding? Seventh-ing? What everyone else says, which is you will TOTALLY KNOW. The music will tell you. If I see gory/violent things like this I get nightmares for literal years, so figuring out when to close my eyes is pretty high stakes for me in movies, but this one was perfect because it completely warns you. (Seriously, I still get nightmares about that scene where the uruk-hai guy kills Boromir he is the scariest. My visual memory wants to destroy my life, apparently.)
TL;DR SEE IT IT IS THE BEST you will know, to quote Yoda.
you fill me with serene calm, I KNEW y’all would know if it was okay or not. thank you soooooo much.
(hahaha omg this brings me back to my first time seeing Fellowship of The Ring in theaters and actually ducking into the hallway during Aragorn’s fight with said Uruk-Hai, and because of this avoidance, seeing the audience’s faces all lit up by the screen, and watching them all scrunch up in a universal “ooohh! Ick!” at once when they saw the end of the fight, so that’s how I knew it was over.)
There were a lot of things I liked about this movie, but I still can’t get over how shit the plot was! You can’t telegraph the sibling incest and murder subplot so OBVIOUSLY and SO EARLY in the movie and then still use it as the BIG REVEAL at the end. I spent the whole time just waiting for Edith to stop being such a dipshit and figure out what the audience knew from about 20 minutes into the movie. I was just like okay there’s obviously a sister-fucking, Bluebeard-y situation here, but where’s the actual dramatic reveal at the end? And when it turned out that that WAS the dramatic reveal it was pretty disappointing. I was expecting something batshit crazy and got something surprisingly mundane 🙁 That being said, Jessica Chastain was delightful and Hiddles did spineless very well. I just wish the rest of the cast got into the campy-gothic-horror more.
And as a side note, did anyone else find it weird that Edith was so scared of her mom’s ghost even after she knew it was her mom? I get being terrified at first, but once you know it’s your mom and she is trying to help you surely you wouldn’t run screaming/try to shut the door on her?
And the big display in theatres also clearly showed how it was going to end up. Before the movie, I pointed it out to my friend.
“See the face with the skull over it? I wonder who’s going to die?!”
“The one with the moth over it vs the butterfly instead? I wonder who’s going to be evilllll and who’s going to be an innocent little butterfly?”
“oh, and the one with ANGEL WINGS SUPERIMPOSED OVER HIS FACE?” Is he going to save someone?!
“THEY’RE A METAPHOR. FOR THE PAST.”
gosh, thanks, script
Also why in every fuck did Hiddles’ prior wives make wax cylinder recordings, and why were they conveniently left in a trunk in the bloodsment basement?
The wax cylinders weren’t even hidden in the basement! They were just shoved in a hallway closet that anyone could find. And since Hiddles was recorded on some of them, he clearly knew they existed, but didn’t bother to destroy the evidence! Really, the whole murder-plot hinged pretty heavily on all his wives being either exceptionally dim or exceptionally uncurious.
Ugh you’re right, of course. A metaphor for the past showed her the wax cylinders in the closet, and the player was in the Enola chest.
(I CLEARLY made the v. hilarious joke that Hiddles had married an aeroplane during the movie)
“I’m hiding these wax cylinders in the hall closest so that someone will find them and learn the truth.”
Well, yes, if someone is listening, they KNOW YOU HID THEM IN THE HALL CLOSET.
Well, it also relied on them being poisoned from the moment they entered the house (by the charming custom of frequent English tea), so that put the odds in the Sharps’ favor.
But the incest bit wasn’t the BIG REVEAL. The face that THEY HAD A BABY was the point where I decided I needed an adult. We knew they were getting it on, but damn, I was not expecting an incest baby!
Eponysterical username
I guess I just wasn’t particularly shocked by pregnancy being the result of regular sex in the absence of birth control?
I wanted to love it, but…so…there is snow in the main hall so cold it doesn’t make puddles AND there are moths awake and moving in the same building? Also “this ring is all we have LEFT!!!!! Except the super expensive furniture/textiles/paintings in every room INCLUDING the ones we don’t even use because they are open to the goddam weather? Ummm…they could have avoided at least one of those trips, selling that stuff! I love me some fabley fantasy plots, but if you can drive a steam locomotive through holes in the plot, it brings me down.
I did not find it weird that Edith was weird because did you LOOK AT THAT BLACK TERRIFYING THING
That did not look like a benign spirit.
“he did everything quarter-assedly, like he had spiritual anemia”
I can think of no fewer than five men for whom this would be an appropriate epitaph.
“He didn’t have the vim to rebel”
several for this as well
He DID have spiritual anemia. I think that was the crux of his character.
Can we also talk about how hopeless the twins were with money? They killed four heiresses for their money, yet could not find a few dollars to deal with the hole in the roof?!
Seriously, they needed better money management. Or richer heiresses. Or something.
I had assumed that the lack of repairs were due to a desire for secrecy rather than a lack of money. Like if you get a bunch of contractors in to do significant repair work to make the house structurally sound, one of them is BOUND to run into the dead bodies that are scattered all over the basement. But for real, considering how quickly the full scale machine got working, it seems like they really should have been able to stop after one heiress.
Hey guys, maybe marry a practical woman? Who’m I kidding, that would turn into some weird Bluebeard/Mary Poppins crossover that would destroy all matter in the universe.
re that keychain: LET”S TALK ABOUT CHATELAINES FOR EVER!!: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-kill…
Can we PLEASE start wearing chatelaines again? It could be like a toast fanclub identifier…
I want a chatelaine so bad
I adore this article and all the visuals and chatelaines forever and ever, but I feel like a lot of their use could be mitigated by just designing women’s clothes to have really good pockets.
Yes but a big part of them is to be a conspicuous sign that you were an important woman carrying house keys etc. And pockets are a pretty historically unusual thing (I am working on an article about pockets for the toast and it’s taking me like a million years because I can’t stop researching it because it’s FASCINATING)
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
Okay, so I really loved the movie – it’s fantastic, it’s pretty, the acting was wonderful, the people were well cast, the sets were incredible, the costumes were great.
Two things though:
1) Tom Hiddleston is ruined for me forever. Incest is one of my ultimate squicks, and he was just waaay to enthusiastic in the yucky scene. Ugh.
2) Someone tried to tell me that they were mad because of people villifying a nontraditional/queer pairing and glorifying heterosexual pairings, and I was confused, and after some prodding I got the implication that they meant that Lucille/Thomas was a queer relationship because it was nontraditional and that it was wrong to show them as insane or damaged because that was just giving more support for non-traditional relationships being bad/wrong, but I cannot. even. understand. considering this to be just a “non-traditional” “queer” relationship because it’s… goddamnit it’s incest, and it’s incest especially with a *particularly* abusive bent considering that there was an age difference between Lucille and Thomas, and it’s clear that she was regularly manipulating him into the relationship and continuing it by twisting the familial love into her version of romantic love and it’s so awful.
ugh.
ugh.
THIS IS WHY QUEER THEORY IS MOSTLY BOSH, “EVERYTHING IS QUEER” AND THEREFORE *NOTHING IS*
RIGHT?!
It just made me sooooooooooo mad and I have literally been waiting all week to bring it up here because I can’t talk to anyone else about it and OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.
they meant that Lucille/Thomas was a queer relationship because it was nontraditional
I … what?
I knooooooooow. I am so confused and actually super upset with it, because like, this person is a friend? and this implies that they think incest is just misunderstood? and I am like wait no what?
That is just….no. Nope, nope, nope.
As an aside, why is critical theory typically so…underwhelming? I interlibrary loan’d a collection of academic essays about Pushing Daisies awhile ago, expecting it to be interesting since the show is so unusual and it was just meh. Like someone said, “Write down every possible thing that could maybe be considered transgressive, but don’t connect or explore them into anything deeper than a Buzzfeed listicle! And definitely don’t organize your ideas!”
Oh, yes, totally! You think there will be something in there, and it’s just very hollow and just not enough. :/
Dangit, I saw “academic essays about Pushing Daisies,” freaked out a little bit, and was going to beg you for a source, before I saw that they were underwhelming. How disappointing. Pushing Daisies is my all time favorite show!
I LOVED Pushing Daisies so much. Still mad that a.) it was cancelled so soon and b.) my girl Olive ended up with Randy the Creepy Taxidermist. So wrong on so many levels.
It’s the Television World of Pushing Daisies and is edited by Alissa Burger. You might get something out of it, maybe? I just felt that there were observations (ex: Emerson’s knitting, Chuck’s nickname = queer) without really building on them or providing context in terms of television in general.
However, my gold standard for academic essays is a SUNY Press collection called The Oprah Affect, which tackles the Oprah book club from various angles (pro- and anti-Franzen, what Oprah means for libraries, the history of declaring women’s fiction hysterical and trite in America, etc.). Changed my whole view of Oprah. I loved that and keep looking for something that replicates that approach for other subjects.
Also cool: Madonna, Like An Icon by Lucy O’Brien, which is a biography of her influences–videos, movies, stage shows–rather than a typical bio.
Olive definitely deserved better than Randy (and I doubt that would have happened had the show not been cancelled, but they just needed to throw together a happy ending for her). I never gave up hope that Alfredo Aldarisio would come back for her.
I’ll have to check all of those essay collections out. I love academia on pop culture (theoretically, that is; it definitely is often underwhelming). One of my favorite college papers was on the postmodern theology of Lost, so I got to read lots of fun stuff for that.
I kind of thought we as a culture moved away from “queer = incest” ten years ago. Bull fucking shit.
I didn’t know that was ever a thing! It makes me super uncomfortable. I consider myself queer, and I just do not want to be in that category.
The Toast
A willing foe, and distressing porridge.
Mallory, about YOUR dog…have you taken him to vet to make sure he doesn’t have a bladder infection? Suggest that. Had similar problem with one of my dogs and that was the problem. Antibiotics to the rescue!
Hmm. May have to see the movie now. Not so fond of gore, but gothic is good.
This is in Buffalo? How come nobody told me this is in Buffalo?
The early bits of the movie take place in Buffalo and Edith is an American, but the beautiful murder mansion bit is in England.
I hope Edith moved back to Buffalo and spent the rest of her life living on Delaware Avenue in a giant stone mansion and taking all manner of female lovers.
My mum has seen the posters for this and I was gonna take her to see it buuuuut……HM. I don’t think she’s expecting this.
“This is why I love season 2 Spike and hate all forms of Angel” GOD YES.
Genes that needed airing out. I’m dead.
So, when was this movie set? Like, the motor-car establishes it as no earlier than about 1908, but didn’t Edith find Murder Marriages going back to like 1870-something? Sir Mr. Spooks was not old enough to be marrying anyone 30 years ago. So I immediately thought “Wait, he’s a ghost!” and then he turned out not to be a ghost until the very end! I felt cheated.
1899!
Then how the hell has Dr. Boyfriend got a dang motor-car?
Cars were invented in the 1880s!
Okay, okay, I guess that checks out. I’m a liiitle skeptical that some schmuck young ophthalmologist would have his own car at the very dawn of the age of private car ownership, but I suppose it’s not the least plausible thing about this movie.
But the date on the father’s check was 1901.
The cheque was dated 1901.
“you can’t just sort of ghost out of your sibling marriage”
did u just
The internet in general, but more specifically pinterest, is completely failing me because I have a deep and compelling need for a Mia-Wasikowska-Crimson-Peak-Updo tutorial.
https://www.pinterest.com/explore/gibson-girl-hai…
I am so happy that I finally found people talking about this film! I loved it so intensely I’m seeing it again tomorrow.
You guys are awesome!
[s]he did everything quarter-assedly, like [s]he had spiritual anemia
oh, look, it’s my epitaph
Edith: You’re not related at all.
Me: Oh girl.
my one single disappointment in this movie is that Edith didn’t get to truly Bluebeard’s-Wife the mystery key by dropping it in gross bloodclay.
There was a key right there! Missed opportunity, I tell you.
This is an excellent review and touches on all the important points (men being useless, incest, butts) but I just want to point out that mia wasikowska is actually an australian so all accents you’ve ever heard her do are lies.
That’s all, sorry (Aussie pride)
I was just scrolling down to make sure someone else had mentioned it!
OH OH OH also big ups to the girl in my theater who heard “in America we get by on hard work, no privilege” and snorted REALLY LOUDLY. Which made the rest of us laugh. That was terrific.
SO MUCH eyerolling at that line. Ugh, he was channeling just about every angry republican man on the internet for that scene.
hahaha. I only saw it two days ago, so it wasn’t me. But I was definitely that girl in a different theater on Saturday.
i have not once in my life been attracted to tom hiddleston, and yet here we are.
*reads through comments*
*repeatedly scrolls back up to Hiddlebutt*
I am SO EXCITED that Nicole and Mallory and various Toastites share my opinion of The Best Movie Ever!!! I went with boys who thought it was great but can’t begin to fathom how much more than great it is.
I made a grave mistake when I took both of my gentleman friends to see it at the same time: neither wants to go see it again immediately because “we just saw it.” Usually when I’m excited about a movie I see it twice, first with one and then the other, but this one seemed too important to delay sharing with either one of them. Sometimes I wonder if over-consumption of gothic novels is responsible for my polyamory- all those love triangles.
I thought I would overcome my inclinations if I met someone who contained both characters: kind and earnest but not lame and overly sanctimonious like Jane Eyre’s cousin St John; and dark and brooding but not truly evil or a jerk like Heathcliff. Nope. For me happily ever after keeps the triangle intact.
I like the idea of Edith enjoying her widowhood without what’s-his-name cluttering up the place, though. Obviously since this was the most perfect movie ever the ending was also perfect, and I LOVED her quip about aspiring to be Mary Shelley. I’ve never been much of a Jane Austen devotee, aside from Northanger Abbey because GOTHIC. I don’t care if she’s mocking it. But it is a wondrous thing to see a movie so proudly gothic.
Good for you! I’m hoping to have two gentlemen friends in the future and I blame not only Gothic Romancees but those silly teenage romances with ‘which guy will she pick’ sub-threads. Why choose just one?
I.e. Why couldn’t Edith have Sir Thomas and Alan, I don’t think Thomas would have said boo to it, or her. Lucky girl!
Now you folks have got me wanting to go see it again, even though I wasn’t 100% into it the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but I kinda wanted it to be something a bit less mundane, to see more done with the supernatural stuff. If the ghosts had played a part in the finale, that would’ve been something.
Film also made me want to watch Stoker again. There was something oddly reminiscent about it (aside from just the presence of Mia Wasikowska). I suppose it does have the murder, incest, and piano playing.
I haven’t seen this yet, but I will. I feel its one of those movies I cannot watch around other people.
Has there been a Movie Yelling about Only Lovers Left Alive? I feel like I need this in my life. And if there hasn’t been one, may I politely request one?
Also, who has seen Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain throw the worst/creepiest party ever? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnxdtgOFwZ0 Bonus Hiddles crying in the mirror over Mark Ruffalo locking him in a portopotty. It was very stinky.
THANK YOU FOR THAT LINK!!!
And man, is he good at crying on film, because those were REAL TEARS right there??
But nothing happened in only lovers left alive, what is there to yell about?
Who needs plot to yell about a movie! What about the hair.
Maybe I just need people to squee with me about it (I cannot be arsed to descend into any sort of fandom again. ). I want to know what people smarter than me think of it.
Also the hair. The glorious hair. And little Chekov trying to be cool. He’s just trying so hard.
Just saw it, and I’m dying to add The Portrait of a Lady to the list of reference/sources. Dr. Alan McMichael seemed to me to be cribbed directly from Caspar Goodwood, and there are similarities between the Edith-Thomas-Lucille triad and the Isabel-Osmond-Madame Merle one. Like Edith, Isabel’s inheritance is what makes her such an attractive mark for the grifters.
Jane Eyre + The Shining + Barton Fink + Flowers in the Attic
For some reason when Lucille said the baby was her baby, I just immediately assumed that meant she was a hermaphrodite who impregnated one of the wives. The Occam’s Razor explanation didn’t even occur to me until hours later, that’s how weird and twisted this movie is.
Okay, I just saw this movie today, and I had to hurry home and reread this (I wanted spoilers before I saw it, because I am a tiny pansy when it comes to horror movies). THIS MOVIE WAS EVERYTHING. Jessica Chastain was perfection. Plus, that HOUSE! Those COSTUMES! The CREEPY-ASS GHOSTS!!! Love love love.
How certain are you that the dog is nervous as opposed to incontinent? Because my mother’s dog had a thing where she was – clearly unconsciously – peeing on my brother’s bed, and the vet said that this is a known bladder issue and gave her pills that seem to have stopped it. Might be worth checking out. Dogs don’t like to pee indoors, and will try to avoid it if at all possible, so I don’t think it could be a housebreaking thing.
The movie: yes, a thousand times yes to the issues with Thomas’s supposed redemption. I’m afraid the movie does intend you to take it seriously, which is ridiculous both from Edith’s end (hello, he did kill her father, and was perfectly fine with killing her so long as they got some alone time together first) and from Lucille’s (because as you say, when you’ve committed multiple murders with your incest sibling, it’s a little late to start developing qualms). I really wanted the film to flip Thomas and Lucille’s roles – have him be the uncomplicatedly evil and monstrous one, and her the one who develops a complicated relationship with Edith – either an overpowering, Mrs. Danvers/second Mrs. deWinter thing, or maybe Lucille gets to be redeemed by Edith’s love/friendship? I mean, she and Thomas are equally guilty and equally messed up, so why shouldn’t she be the one who finds her humanity due to exposure to a pretty girl?
House has no roof, snow coming in, wind howling, barometric pressure changing — Piano is in tune?
Hahaha!!
Late to this party as I just saw the movie (which was great). Also be sure to check out the amazing poster art:
Here is the artist’s tumblr:
http://tinymediaempire.tumblr.com/
😍😍😍😍 oh my goodness. Thank you so much for sharing that, it’s beyond beautiful!
Thank you both for this marvelous episode of movie yelling! Those ghosts would creep my sh!t out so there’s no way I can see this movie, but now I feel like I’ve caught up on all the important parts.
I saw this with my best friend and the first thing we said to each other when we got out of the theatre was “I can’t wait to get this on DVD so we can yell at it”
OKAY. I saw it again and I decided that the Leaves of Questionable Origin that fall so picturesquely from the roof hole are from climbing vines rather than an invisible tree. (I’m the kind of person who has to explain away apparent plot holes and illogic if it’s a movie I love). Not that I saw these vines, but there were some around a window. Or maybe there were lots of trees growing from the roof itself. We couldn’t see them because they were very small, black, and spindly.
As for the miraculous tuned piano mentioned above, probably Lucille never sleeps and she creeps downstairs to tune the piano every single morning. Or maybe she lovingly but evilly gazes it into submission like she does with her brother. Definitely I bet that’s it: She caresses the strings and gazes at it. If I were a piano I would stay in tune for her.
Mallory, take your dog to the vet to get his bladder checked. My cat was peeing all the time, occasionally on things I didn’t want her to pee on. Turns out, she had a GINORMOUS bladder stone which had to be surgically removed. It must have been hurting her like crazy to pee, especially considering the pee seemed to contain a fair amount of blood. The lesson I’ve learned is that if you have a pet who inexplicably starts peeing way more often and in places where they shouldn’t, take them to the vet. There’s a good chance something’s wrong.
The best part of the whole viewing gestalt was the person three rows behind me audibly exclaiming throughout the whole thing. My friends and I laughed until we had tears in our eyes.
I finally went and saw this last night with my mom. So now I got to read this without being spoiled. However majoring in literature in college and loving gothic lit allowed me to predict lots of this movie. I still loved it, it totally pushed all my pleasure buttons. I hated myself for hoping for 5 minutes at the end for Lucy’s death Thomas’ redemption and them and Edith could start over. But then I just embraced because as somebody who loves the romance of Hannibal and Clarice in the Hannibal books I have no right to judge that thought.
My favorite moment of the viewing however was right after Edith catches them in the act. My mom leans over to me and says, “Oh my God he’s fucking his sister! This is just like that one episode of “Law and Order SVU.” The one with Rose McGowan in it.”
Y’all! There is an art book for the movie! “Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness”. It even has little things in it. I’m ordering it right now.
From the amazon description: “Bringing del Toro’s imagination to life, the book also features a number of special removable items, including authentic period letters from key characters, daguerreotype photographs, newspaper clippings, journal pages, and more.”
I’m late to the game here, but Little White Lies devoted an ENTIRE ISSUE to this movie and it’s pretty glorious.
The best part of my particular screening was when Edith gets out of bed and asks the ghost to “give her a sign.” A guy sitting by himself in the front row just yelled, “FOR FUCK’S SAKE” and everyone burst out laughing.
I just saw the movie (barely released today in Mexico) with some friends that were kind of clueless about Guillermo del Toro and goth stories and fairy tales and I was dying. Did anyone else catch the paraphrasing of the “string in my chest” Jane Eyre quote?
“I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you’d forget me.”
I’m really really glad a movie like this exists.
I did!! I love Eyre and the Bronte’s and I was so excited to hear that part I re-read Eyre when I came home, and pretended to brush up on my French to read Charlotte’s letter’s to Constanine Heger (her former employer as a governess, and her unrequited love)…ooh!
Awesome! 😀 I felt so cool when I recognized it and wanted to share the excitement with someone else.
I’ve never read the letters, but I think they would just make me shake my head nonstop and lament not being able to talk to Charlotte… falling in love with a married, older, learned man, tsk tsk.
(sorry for the delay, I hadn’t realized someone had replied)
No worries, I would post but it’s an awfully long letter.
I could completely see it though, and empathize with her poor thing. I think Charlotte is my favorite Bronte.
Oh god, this movie was awesome and I'm glad I knew about the sink (and face stabbing scene) ahead of time so I could shut my eyes until Edith's father was good and dead.
I got super excited when Edith's dad gave her the fancy gold fountain pen b/c fountain pens are my thing and that one looked pretty legit for like, 1901. But the close-ups of Edith writing with it had me going, "Oh come on!" Maybe I'm wrong but the nib looked like every other garden-variety, modern day fountain pen nib than a turn-of-the-century pen. But I'm also a nerd who notices these things and gets worked up about them so don't mind me.
Also, I think I would have been spoiled about the "big" reveal even if I hadn't read Nicole and Mallory's review because I feel like the twist is easy to guess the 2nd time you watch the trailer. It doesn't seem like the movie is super subtle about it. Or maybe I watch too much Game of Thrones. But either way, within 5 minutes of Hiddleston and Chastain appearing onscreen, I had to stop myself from yelling, "oh, please, they're totally boning" in the theater.
My god. Mallory is the Lucille and Nicole is the Edith.
I know I am really late to the game on this move, but can we talk about how funny it is that British people used tea to poison the American? Maybe we just THINK British people like tea that much, but they are really poisoning us all. 😛
I liked this post so much I watched the film because of it, then did it fan art https://mobile.twitter.com/cpcoventry/status/7044…