Guillermo del Toro on His Abiding Love for His Most Underappreciated Film

Between Pacific Rim (his astir commercially palmy movie worldwide) and The Shape of Water (his Oscar-winning smash), Guillermo del Toro released Crimson Peak—a movie filled with themes and visually dazzling imagery beloved to his Gothic-loving bosom that didn’t rather find its footing with audiences oregon critics. Looking backmost successful a caller interview, helium has an thought wherefore the 2015 movie was initially truthful misunderstood.

Speaking to Vulture, del Toro explained the selling had thing to bash with it: audiences thought they were getting a full-on fearfulness flick—not a tortured play romance with supernatural overtones. “What I was trying to bash with Crimson Peak was what I’ve tried to bash successful galore of my movies: marque an enactment movie that operates arsenic an anti-action movie or, successful the lawsuit of Crimson Peak, a Gothic romance that defuses the romance,” helium said. Later successful the interview, helium goes deeper connected that: “I knew I wanted to nutrient a lavish, beautiful, operatic spectacle, with sets and melodrama and beauteous airy and, you know, conscionable marque it marque it a benignant of banquet.”

Unfortunately, arsenic the manager recalled, Crimson Peak‘s unsocial sensibilities proved hard to market. “The happening that volition always, pun intended, haunt that movie is that it was sold arsenic a fearfulness movie,” helium said to Vulture, recalling that astatine the clip helium cognize it was a “doomed” strategy. “I was saying, ‘You should beforehand the romance, and you should beforehand the mystery. The past happening you privation to bash is beforehand it arsenic horror.’ We were opening successful October, and October is the period of Halloween, truthful I recognize wherefore it happened.”

However, he’s good pleased that Crimson Peak has recovered its assemblage successful the years since. “It’s a movie that connects with the radical who emotion it astatine an astir molecular level,” helium said. And del Toro is, unsurprisingly, among their number; helium calls it “one of the movies I emotion the astir and that is precise adjacent to my heart.”

Guillermo del Toro’s adjacent merchandise volition beryllium his much-anticipated instrumentality connected Frankenstein for Netflix.

Want much io9 news? Check retired erstwhile to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s adjacent for the DC Universe connected movie and TV, and everything you request to cognize astir the aboriginal of Doctor Who.