The Scarlet Peak: The Darkness Of Passions

For all those who are more familiar with Guillermo del Toro’s cinema, it will come as no surprise to find themselves in front of a film like La cumbre scarlata (2015); the director makes his intentions clear: the vindication of the monsters. Extraordinary beings, ghosts and monsters make up the filmography of this Mexican director, but they are not presented as fearsome or vengeful.

The appearance may be terrifying, but it is nothing more than that, a simple appearance. The real monsters live with us every day, they inhabit cities and can dress in the best clothes.

Del Toro drinks from the influences of horror movies, the gothic novel and those spaces whose past seems never to have vanished. However, it is not a film that tries to scare the viewer or, at least, not through the supernatural.

The reviews were of very different colors, some pointed to the magic of its atmosphere, but others classified the film lightly. The public was not so benevolent and, although the film approved, it did not quite shine.

Perhaps the problem was that many were expecting to see a movie about haunted mansions full of scares, following the more traditional wake of the genre. And, in fact, The Scarlet Summit follows all the conventions of terror to the letter, while reinventing them and giving us a new point of view.

Scares are not caused by ghosts, terror does not reside in the afterlife … True terror is found among the living, in the most human and chilling passions. Del Toro joins the romantic tradition of exploring the depths of the human mind, the secrets and mysteries that surround a society already in decline.

In an absolutely gloomy mansion that seems to take on a life of its own, breathe and even bleed, The Scarlet Summit brings together all the footprints of the Mexican filmmaker to configure a story that could perfectly be inspired by a Romanticism novel.

The Scarlet Summit : The Passions

The story begins in New York at the end of the 19th century, Edith is the young daughter of an important businessman. She is not a conventional woman, she is not a woman who fits the mold of her time.

Edith aspires to become a writer, but she does not want to write romantic comedies and dramas related to women, but those stories that have haunted her since her childhood: ghost stories. Edith has always believed in ghosts, has seen them and has been able to verify that, in reality, they are not going to harm her.

Del Toro has always opted for a strong presence of women in his filmography, for separating them from supporting roles, from ‘ladies in distress’. It gives them strength, prominence and makes them masters of their actions and their destiny. Edith will face her father when she meets Sir Thomas, a young British man with whom she falls in love.

The scarlet summit mocks the conventions of 19th century high society, laughs at the morals of the time and gives us a young woman that we could perfectly see years later. That description of high society, that slight but effective criticism that joins the gender roles and marriages of convenience of the time reminds us in some way of Jane Austen’s literature.

After the death of her father, Edith travels to England with Sir Thomas, stopping at his family home, Allerdale Hall. In Allerdale, they will live alongside Lucille, Sir Thomas’ strange sister. Both brothers have set out to restore splendor to their ruined mansion.

Allerdale Hall was, in its day, a place that shone with its own light, a prosperous place where the wealthy and aristocratic family of Thomas and Lucille lived. However, from those years there is hardly more than a sad facade.

The interior of the house is absolutely freezing, the ruins have caused the roof to collapse and the currents seem like whispers from beyond. The house seems to come to life, its floor emanates blood, its walls breathe. The red clay that Sir Thomas hopes to exploit turns the snow the color of blood. Edith will have to get used to this new life, to a house that seems to yell at her to get out, to flee as far as possible.

From the beginning, we know that something strange happens with Lucille and Sir Thomas, the intrigue does not lie in the detective search for a murderer or a ghost. Ghosts appear on the scene throughout the film, orient Edith and communicate with her; the intrigue lies in the passions, in the complexity and the dark past of the two brothers. Power, ambition, love, incest, life and death… all come together in Scarlet Summit .

The two women will be the most powerful presences, especially Lucille, who shines with her own light thanks to the spectacular performance of Jessica Chastain. Metaphors abound from the beginning, colors take on special importance, the scarlet red of Lucille’s dress contrasts with Edith’s pale dress.

Passions are manifested through that color, scarlet red, the color of blood, the forbidden and the erotic. In turn, the green tones of the environment evoke the obscene, the impure of the place.

Violence, love and blood

Terror merges with love in The Scarlet Summit , nothing is more scary than human passions, nothing terrifies more than a madman in love, obsessive. The incestuous hides behind the weak walls of Allerdale Hall, the past has been tortured and it cannot dissociate itself from that dark place.

Edith travels through endless corridors, enters a spooky elevator and descends into hell, to the place where it all began, where blood emanates from the walls.

The construction of the film is almost metaphorical, the house itself is a parallel with those passions that end up destroying the human being, that lead him down the path of violence, anger and desire. Love, eroticism and violence seem to go hand in hand, the plot moves away from the terror produced by ghosts to present them to us as friends, as allies.

This violent and love triangle that the three protagonists make up greatly reminds us of the literature of romanticism, but also of Agatha Christie’s crimes of passion. Likewise, Hitchcock’s influence can be felt from the first minutes of the footage.

We are, therefore, before a film that takes all the influences of the director, regroups and orders them to tell a story of haunted houses and devastating passions. Violence is not annoying, it is aesthetic, blood melts with snow creating poetry.

Surely, this is not the best Mexican movie and is far from others like Pan’s Labyrinth , but Del Toro managed to capture what he wanted, he managed to make magic and fantasy fit into this gothic horror.

In a world where we can no longer believe in fairies, Scarlet Summit gives us that dose of nostalgia, of romanticism. But together with the novelty, at the present time, Edith takes the reins of this story that, had it been written in the 19th century, would have been carried out by a man.

Del Toro builds an entertaining and enveloping film that captures the tragedy of a place in absolute decline.