The ghost is just a metaphor: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, nineteenth-century female gothic, and the slasher

Abstract

This article proposes a feminist reading of Guillermo del Toro’s horror-ghost film CRIMSON PEAK (2015) that is based on the film’s allusions to nineteenth-century female gothic writing and the slasher’s final girl trope. Del Toro utilises the ghost as a metaphor that mirrors the precarious position of women in patriarchal societies (in general) and in horror narratives (in particular). The film simultaneously sketches the development of the genre as such, from literary fiction to film. CRIMSON PEAK is thus a highly self-referential film that borrows from its predecessors and sheds light on the ghostliness of horror as such.