If Merchant Ivory made a horror film it would look something like this. A visual feast of side dishes with no main course, Guillermo Del Toro delivers the ravishingly beautiful Crimson Peak.  A haunted house tale that Del Toro has repeatedly said is not a horror film, but a “gothic romance” much in the way that he insisted Pan’s Labyrinth was an adult “fairy tale.”  To be sure, the elements are there.  It has romance; a love triangle between wealthy, brainy heiress, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), the conniving Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston, aka Loki) and the stereotypical good-guy Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam).  The film features Gothic elements of a threatening mystery and stylized drama. However, when it comes to the plot, the flaws bleed through like the blood-red clay that seeps up through the ground around the titular mansion.

“Ghosts are real,” says our heroine at the beginning of the film. Standing in a blinding snowstorm, blonde hair whipping around her head, she imparts this knowledge via voiceover after having lived through horrific events.  We flash back to her childhood where we see why she declares the existence of ghostly apparitions, seeing her dead mother’s ghost visiting her in the middle of the night. In a raspy whisper, (Played by Pan’s Labyrinth alum Doug Jones), warns, “Beware of Crimson Peak!”

How quickly she forgets. Flash forward to see our radiant Edith in New York with her wealthy father (Deadwood’s Jim Beaver). The brainy Edith bristles at society’s conventions, dismissing the assumed role of wide-eyed husband hunter, in pursuit of becoming a writer. Soon trouble arrives in the form of Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his creepy sister, Lucille (played with icy demeanor by Jessica Chastain).  They attempt to gain Edith’s father’s money by requesting an investment in a clay mining operation back home in England.  He rejects them.  Naturally Thomas then begins to woo Edith.  This irks her father and he suddenly turns up dead in a nasty burst of graphic violence, a Del Toro trademark.

With Edith in pocket and money in hand, Thomas and Lucille whisk Edith off to their crumbling mansion in England.  Named for the blood-red clay, the locals have dubbed the area Crimson peak. Atop a massive clay deposit, this outlandishly ornate, pitch black mansion sits literally creaking and shifting and falling apart.  Edith is welcomed into this laughably bad situation and reacts not with disgust or anger, but with a regretful acceptance.

As her stay as the new lady of the home goes on, she returns to the habit of attracting ghostly harbingers of doom.  Beautifully rendered ghosts emerge from floors, clawing their way down the hallway to her, some lunge through doorways, others appear out of nowhere.  When Del Toro is in this territory, the film excels.  All the while we understand that the danger is not from the dead, but from the living. The ghosts continue to appear, warning her of the dangers in staying where she is. Of course all is revealed in the end to those who haven’t figured out what was going.  But the problem here is that for the most part, many will, and many will also wonder why a character like Edith, who was set up to have such a head on her shoulders, turns out to be such a dope.

As with any Guillermo Del Toro film, the production values are off the charts.  In fact, the players and plot all seem to take a back seat to the opulent set design, the detailed costume design, the lush cinematography and the gorgeous sound.  Let’s face it though, that is part of the reason we love Del Toro.  Even at his worst, and this is by no means his worst, he is far more interesting than 90% of the filmmakers around today.

The movie feels a lot like the scribblings in the margins for the long-delayed Haunted Mansion pic still rolling around in development hell.  We know Del Toro can fashion a stunning visual tapestry, he just needs a good story to go along with it. This one, while beautiful, leaves no lasting impression beyond the imposing edifice to mood and atmosphere.

See it on the big screen, just pay matinee price.