(Guillermo Del Toro, US/Mexico/Canada 2015, 119 min., 35mm)
Director Guillermo Del Toro returns to his gothic roots with this tale of hauntings, both of the spectral nature and that of family history. In turn-of-the-century Buffalo, budding author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) meets Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an English baronet who has come to the United States with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), to seek investors for his clay-mining invention. In time, Edith falls for Thomas’s charms and marries him, moving to his grand, but aging, English estate. There, struggling as the head of the household and banned from certain areas of the castle, Edith begins to see ghosts and decides to uncover the secrets buried in the red clay. Splashed with overwhelming color, Del Toro’s gothic romance captures the essence of novels and films such as The Heiress and Rebecca.