This may sound impossible, but Crimson Peak was nothing like what I expected, and yet exactly what I expected. All the promotional material would have you believe it's a Gothic Horror, a misconception so great that Guillermo del Toro felt compelled to take to Twitter and insist that it was a Gothic Romance.
This difference became clear to me within the first twenty minutes of the film, which spends more time on the budding courtship between Edith Cushing and Thomas Sharpe than it does any of the nightly spectres. As such, I was left with my paradoxical statement: that Crimson Peak wasn't what I initially expected, but once the ball started rolling I knew exactly how it would unfold.
SPOILERS
