Guillermo del Toro Explains Why “Crimson Peak” is Not a Horror Flick

[Edith] Ghosts are real.

This much I know.

This is Guillermo del Toro and the movie is Crimson Peak.

Crimson Peak is not a horror film,

it's a gothic romance.

Big difference,

and gothic romance mostly is sort of

this princess-like figure

falling in love with a Byronian dark gentleman,

going to a crumbling mansion,

which is a staple of gothic,

so this girl goes to that castle,

and discovers a horrible secret.

Since gothic romance depends on a building,

I thought the best course of action

was to build it for real.

I think that digital effects or computer effects

should only be used a last resort.

We can put a great deal of craftsmanship

into creating a vital character of the movie

which is the house.

We spent about seven months layering the house visually,

but what we did is we do a process

that I jokingly call eye protein

as opposed to eye candy

because, see, the content of it is not only beautiful,

but it tells a story,

so to give you an example,

we built that furniture in two sizes,

30% bigger, 30% smaller,

so when Edith is in the furniture,

and she's weak, she looks little,

and when she's strong, she looks bigger.

We color code the movie very carefully

so that it has chapters in different colors.

I wanted to color code the ghosts.

Some of it is instinctive,

it's not rational like I wanted

to open and close the movie with a black ghost.

I wanted to have one white ghost,

and then, I said the ghosts are gonna be red,

and we're gonna link them to the clay

because the aspect of them,

I wanted them for a very particular reason

which I don't wanna spoil,

I wanted them to be characters,

so as the movie goes on,

you realize there function is different than you thought.

I knew from the get go, when we were doing the movie,

to be female-centric because gothic romance

was written by great women writers,

and make it about two points-of-view of love.

Edith is one type of love,

Lucille is another type of love,

but one is liberating,

and the other one is suffocating.

It's really just two very strong wills

clashing full frontal.

In Mexico, we have a saying,

we don't believe in ghosts but the ghosts are real,

so it doesn't matter what you believe.

I experienced it, all my family has seen ghosts.

I don't know.

It must be in the water.

(door banging)

What do you want?

(crash)

(dramatic music)