First posted December 2019.

I began a series on Guillermo del Toro’s fairytales with The Shape of Water, and noted at the time that I had intended to start with what is probably his best-known fairytale, Pan’s Labyrinth. And I really did intend to write that one second. But here we are.

The thing is, Crimson Peak is not a fairytale. Though the “it isn’t a horror film if it doesn’t scare me personally” crowd is absolutely ridiculous, they also happen to be correct as far as the fact that Crimson Peak isn’t a horror film, either. The studio certainly marketed it as such, which is the main reason it was considered a box office failure. But it is distinctly, down to the letter, a gothic romance. And although it adheres firmly to its genre, there are touches of fairytales present, if only touches.

The gothic/fairytale crossover has had a presence for quite some time, mostly as an aesthetic popularised by musicians like Emilie Autumn and filmmakers such as Tim Burton. Though the two genres have their own distinct rules and hallmarks, there’s certainly room for overlap. The story that perhaps most easily lends itself to the blending of genres, and one you can see in the bones (no pun intended) (maybe a little bit intended) of Crimson Peak is ‘Bluebeard.’ It is the go-to for ‘dark fairytales,’ as it is one that never got as cleaned up as ‘Snow White’ or ‘Cinderella,’ both of which have bloodier versions along the road to Disney.

In the story of Bluebeard, a young woman is wed to a mysterious man from a land far away. When he takes her back to his beautiful home, she is given a ring of keys. He tells her she may enter every room in the house, except the room the smallest key opens. While he is away, she explores the house, but curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the door to the forbidden room. Inside are the corpses of his six previous wives, warning her of her eventual doom. A blood stain appears on the key, and she cannot wash it away. Luckily, her brothers show up before her husband’s rage results in her death.

Crimson Peak is not precisely a Bluebeard story, but similarities are easy to see. Edith is whisked away by a mysterious baronet from England and taken to his beautiful if menacing mansion. Her new sister-in-law steadfastly refuses to give her any copies of the keys, but curiosity gets the better of her, and she steals a key to go searching. She discovers that her new husband has been married three times before, and that all three of her predecessors were poisoned. Evidence in the form of a recording made by the most recent late wife warns her of her eventual doom. Luckily, her beau from America shows up to take her away.

Another fairytale link that may not be as obvious is ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ Perrault’s version of the tale includes the prince’s stepmother who attempts to murder not only her daughter-in-law, but her two grandchildren as well. In the version of the story Perrault borrowed from, Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” it is not the prince’s stepmother but, in fact, his first wife. The dual nature of that character is quite apparent in the character of Lucille, both sister and lover to Thomas, who slowly poisons Edith, as she did to Thomas’s previous wives.

There is an element, as with The Shape of Water and Hellboy, of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ to which del Toro returns often. The way in which he uses this fairytale every time he uses it is, more than anything else, what makes this story relevant for contemporary times. It is a topic about which we seem to have to be more and more vigilant. When del Toro invokes this fairytale, the question he is posing to us is, “What makes a monster?” In The Shape of Water, I’ve already discussed how the true beast is not the Asset, but Strickland. In Hellboy, the titular character may be a monster, but he is not the monstrous one. Lucille’s “monstrous love” speech is perhaps a dead giveaway; the ghosts are real, and they are scary, but they are not the monsters in Allerdale Hall.

In a way, it seems almost a pre-emptive response to the “but it didn’t scare me” crowd; if you stop trying to be scared of the ghosts and listen to them, they might have something to tell you. It is true of both fairytales and horror that these stories are told for a reason, with a specific message to convey, and though Crimson Peak itself is neither, it has enough of both in its DNA that it functions in the same way.