Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain goth it up in 'Crimson Peak'

Guillermo del Toro's new horror movie, "Crimson Peak," isn't the least bit scary, leading rabid fans to counter that it's really a Gothic romance.

Bad news: It's not romantic either.

Unless the romance is between del Toro and the indulgent design of his movie, an infatuation you may find yourself unable to sustain as the movie plods toward two hours.

Certainly "Crimson Peak" starts out as a horror story: a girl is visited by the ghost of her dead mother, who appears as a black skull surrounded by snaky tendrils of special effects.

"Beware Crimson Peak," she says. Sound maternal advice, and, as such, it's inevitably and carelessly ignored.

Flash forward a decade, and the girl has grown into Edith (Mia Wasikowska), daughter of a prosperous industrialist in 1901 Buffalo. Her friends are vying to be married off, but she's an aspiring writer of ghost stories who models herself after Mary Shelley.

Her plucky independence attracts the attention of a handsome local doctor (Charlie Hunnam), but she herself is swept off her feet by the tall, pallid, mysterious English nobleman (Tom Hiddleston) who arrives in Buffalo looking for investor cash - prospects that a wealthy young wife wouldn't hurt.

With him is his creepy, possessive sister (Jessica Chastain). Chastain's accent is a little too studied, but she's utterly believable as Hiddleston's sibling - each has an apparent aversion to sunlight.

Did they grow up in a cave?

Something very much like it. Edith soon moves to their ancestral home in England, a dark and drafty mansion which, for some reason, has a working elevator but an enormous hole in the roof that no one has bothered to patch.

This allows Del Toro to drop fluttering leaves and/or snowflakes in virtually every shot, providing a moody backdrop for his actors, who are costumed in dazzling dollops of color that stand out against inky black recesses of the building's interiors.

So, yeah, it's looks spiffy, but I had a question: Where is Hellboy?

By which I mean: Where is the humor, the propulsion, the story sense of del Toro's best work?

"Crimson Peak" is overdesigned and under-dramatized, like his recent sci-fi epic, "Pacific Rim." The final hour is given over to the gaslighting of poor Edith, who is meant to be strong and smart - the very essence of New World vibrancy. So, why is she so infernally slow to pick up on the obvious - the poison in her tea, the actual nature of the relationship between her husband and sister-in-law?

This despite the input of several ghosts who try to help out, pointing at important clues with their bony fingers.

Edith's lamp, though, is a little low on kerosene, so she ends up in the family dungeon, where red liquid gurgles up from the depths, foreshadowing the bloodbath finale, staged in the snow for better color contrast.

Poor Edith flees the basement, then the house, and ends up being chased around the grounds by a weirdo with a meat cleaver.

On the whole, she'd rather be in Buffalo.

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