"Crimson Peak"


Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, 
Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Bruce Gray and Alec Stockwell

With appearances by Burn Gorman, Leslie Hope and Jonathan Hyde.

Hello again and welcome to another installment of Diandra 
Demonstrates Her Inability to Make Good Life Choices. Today, we 
will be setting aside our ongoing series of Marvel Cinematic 
Universe recaps AND any thoughts of actually starting recaps of 
The Night Manager in favor of Crimson Peak because - as Chrissy 
explained it - Halloween is coming up and do we really need a 
reason?
   Chrissy: Oh, stop with the fake complaining. 

The standard studio promos play, but all the normal colors have 
been tinted red and all sounds have been replaced by a child 
singing creepily. Just in case anyone didn't realize this was a 
horror movie yet. The child is replaced by what sounds like a 
train engine puffing in slow motion. And then we actually open 
on a blank screen and the engine is still puffing but now it's 
accompanied by a woman panting. We slowly focus on Mia 
Wasikowska in a frilly dress, staring dumbly at her bloodied 
hand.
   Chrissy: Ever have one of those days where you wake up 
    covered in somebody else's blood?
   Diandra: No, but it seems to happen a lot in Hollywood.

She lowers her hand and we push in on her face, which has a few 
bloody wounds on it, as she cries. Her voice over announces 
that ghosts are real and she knows because she has seen them.

Switch to a shot of people in period clothing carrying a coffin 
as she says she saw her first ghost when she was 10. It turns 
out the coffin contains her mother, who died of "black 
cholera", a disease that apparently left her corpse so 
grotesque that her father asked for a closed casket at the 
funeral and ordered her not to look at the body.

We push in on the child version of Mia watching the funeral and 
switch to her laying in bed on a dark, stormy night, listening 
to all the creepy noises the house is making and crying. 
Whether she is crying because she's afraid or because her 
mother died recently isn't clear. But if she wasn't afraid 
before, the door creaking open all by itself to reveal a 
shadowy figure coming up the stairs at the end of the hall 
should make her pee herself. She does an admirable job of not 
screaming and just watching as the figure floats toward her, 
flickering through wispy ghost and skeletal forms like it can't 
quite land on a shape it likes. When it enters the room, little 
Mia curls into a ball and pretends to be asleep.

A bony, black hand grabs her shoulder and a voice whispers "my 
child...when the time comes...beware of Crimson Peak." She 
finally snaps and screams and the ghost disappears.

Mia voiceovers that she didn't hear a voice like that again for 
years. "Or understood it's desperate warning. A warning from 
out of time. And one that I came to understand only when it was 
too late."

Now that we have the audiences' attention, we can stop bouncing 
around and settle on the point where the main story begins.

We open on an 1800s market in Buffalo New York, 14 years later. 
Mia walks through the market square, managing not to get her 
high heels stuck in the mud. She runs into a building and right 
into Charlie Hunam so they can exchange a little exposition. 
Her name is Edith, his is Alan and he's setting up a practice 
in one of the upstairs offices. She says she has an appointment 
with somebody named Ogilvy to see if she can get the manuscript 
she's holding published. She's a good hour early for it, but 
she wants to do some last minute editing before she hands it 
over, so...
   Chrissy: Pfffttt. Writers.
   Diandra: Why do I get the feeling that was aimed at me?
   Chrissy: Maybe because there are no other writers 
    currently in the room with me?

A busybody Alan identifies as "mum" comes down the stairs with 
a gaggle of other women, rambling about somebody she met at the 
British museum. Another woman interjects that the person she's 
talking about is "so handsome" for no apparent reason.
   Chrissy: Although it does clue us in to who they're 
    talking about.
   Diandra: Not if you're the woman I first saw this movie 
    with.
   Chrissy: Well...I would say that is why you should have 
    watched it with me, but that probably balanced to have 
    the two of you drooling over different guys.
   Diandra: I think we're always drooling over different 
    guys because our tastes are completely different.
   Chrissy: Didn't you say you were both drooling over 
    Chris Hemsworth in something else?
   Diandra: Were we? Well...Hemsworth is probably a 
    universal. If you're breathing and attracted to men, he 
    makes you drool.

The other woman also calls mum "mother", so I guess Alan has a 
gaggle of sisters. The girls all chirp about whatshisface 
crossing the ocean with his sister for business purposes and 
oh, he's a baronet, whatever that is and doesn't this totally 
sound like the sort of gossipy girl talk these kind of girls 
STILL DO in modern times? Edith establishes herself as exactly 
the kind of person I like to think I would have been in those 
days by grumbling about aristocrats who live off land that 
others work for them, which she declares "a parasite with a 
title". Also, she calls Mum "Mrs. McMichael". Mum gives her a 
nasty smile and says luckily the parasite in question is good 
looking and a great dancer, not that it matters to little miss 
Jane Austen wannabe. Then she makes a show of belatedly 
remembering that Jane Austen died "a spinster". Alan tries to 
defend Edith, but Edith brushes mum's comments off and says she 
thinks of herself more as a Mary Shelley. "She died a widow." 
She nods politely and takes advantage of the brief silence she 
has stunned them into to stalk away in the 19th century 
equivalent of a mic drop.

So she's sitting at a desk writing, belatedly realizing she is 
getting ink all over her hands and forehead, when the man she 
is meeting with enters the room. He calls her Miss Cushing and 
notes that she is early. She scrambles to take off the reading 
glasses she is wearing.

And we cut to him flipping through the pages of her manuscript, 
noting that it is a ghost story and her father didn't warn him 
about THAT. She says it's not really a ghost STORY, the ghost 
is just a metaphor for the past. Which worked just fine when 
Dickens did it, but then again, he was a man. Since Edith is 
not, Ogilvy is more concerned with how pretty her handwriting 
is. He offers to give her some advice and we cut right to her 
complaining to her father that he told her she should make it a 
love story. Dad notes that Ogilvy is pretty old fashioned so it 
shouldn't be surprising that he thinks that's the only thing 
women can write.
   Chrissy: Along with cookbooks and how-to manuals on 
    cleaning and keeping men happy.
   Diandra: So anything that you'd find in Cosmo, 
    basically.
   Chrissy: Among others, but since you don't read any of 
    them, yeah, let's go with that.

Edith points out basically what I just inferred from the "old 
fashioned" description: he only said it because she's a woman 
and she doesn't WANT to write a love story. Dad shrugs, hands 
her a box and says he had hoped this would be a celebratory 
present, but... She pulls an expensive looking pen out of the 
box as he explains that being a builder, he understands the 
importance of having the right tool for the job. She says it's 
beautiful, but she was actually hoping she could type her story 
on the typewriter in his office because she wants to submit it 
to The Atlantic Monthly and she just realized her handwriting 
is TOO FEMININE for them to take her seriously. 

His "office" turns out to be AN office, where she sits at a 
desk near guys building a scale model of a building. She's 
happily typing out her entire work again, gushing with another 
lady about how nice it looks, when Tom Hiddleston swaggers over 
and plops a large case in front of her desk. He takes off his 
ridiculous top hat and announces he has an appointment with Mr. 
Carter Everett Cushing. He hands her a card announcing himself 
as Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet and she kind of looks him up and 
down like .............oh. The other lady takes his card and 
says she'll go tell Boss Daddy he's here. Edith, who has 
already decided he's a parasite, remember, starts sneering 
about how he better not be late because Mr. Cushing hates that. 
Also, he hates people who are early.
   Chrissy: And people who are too tall and handsome and 
   wear top hats. He's really dislikes a very wide array of 
   specific things.

Thomas picks up the pages of manuscript she has next to the 
typewriter and notes that it's fiction.
   Chrissy: And people who are nosy. He REALLY hates that.
He asks who she's transcribing it for. She non-answers that 
it's going to be sent to The Atlantic Monthly tomorrow. 
Apparently he's a speed reader or very quick to judge writing 
because he says it's very good. She falters immediately like 
the praise whore us writers inevitably are and asks if he 
really thinks so. She smiles and says in that case...it's mine. 
Me. I wrote it. He cocks an eyebrow and just says "ghosts?" She 
babbles that the ghosts are just a metaphor and...he interrupts 
that ghosts have always fascinated him, actually, and he comes 
from a land where ghosts are treated as very much real.
   Chrissy: As are vampires. By the way...have we met 
    before?
   Diandra: I thought we established that this movie 
    couldn't possibly exist in the same universe as "Only 
    Lovers Left Alive".
   Chrissy: That's because you're not thinking creatively 
    enough. You know how children of people in movies and 
    television always look EXACTLY like their parents?
   Diandra: .........you're suggesting Adam got some human 
    woman pregnant?
   Chrissy: As long as it doesn't lead to whatever mutant 
    bullshit was going on in that last "Twilight" story, I 
    don't see a problem.
   Diandra: So what...Ava also had a child?
   Chrissy: Eh. Maybe further down the line back before she 
    was a vampire. This could be her great granddaughter.
   Diandra: You've really given this a lot of thought.
   Chrissy: Well, ever since the "Lovers" recap I've been 
    trying to figure out connections between ALL the 
    universes. Do you realize we're less than ten minutes 
    into the movie and we're already going off the rails 
    here?
   Diandra: And whose fault is that?
   Chrissy: Point taken. Move along.

Daddy arrives at that moment and Thomas shakes his hand. "I see 
you've already met my daughter, Edith," Daddy says proudly. 
Thomas is like '......oh shit.' She smirks. 

And we just go to Thomas giving a presentation to Daddy 
Cushing's people about the Sharpe clay mines that have been in 
the family since 1796...
   Chrissy: Okay, so maybe he's a great grandkid too.
   Diandra: Can we move on from this headcanon? 
   Chrissy: You can. I'm trying to remember where Tom 
    Hazard was at this point in history and whether his 
    path might have intersected with Thomas Sharpe's.
   Diandra: So we're still trying to do crossovers between 
    Tom and Benedict's characters then.
   Chrissy: How is that different from that Pirate Tom 
    capturing the ship Edmund Talbot is on headcanon you 
    were creating on Tumblr?
   Diandra: ............point taken. 

He presents a sample of the clay, which he says is the purest 
scarlet colored clay in existence and claims in its liquid form 
it can be used to make super strong bricks and tiles. Of 
course, they have mined it to the point where a lot of the "old 
deposits" have collapsed, so he's designed a new harvester to 
dig for new deposits. He uncovers a model of what looks like a 
steampunk oil drill. He flips a switch and it begins whirring 
and spinning parts and puffs some smoke into the air. Daddy 
Cushing tells him to turn it off and his face falls a little. 
Daddy Cushing asks if he's actually tested a full scale 
version. He says well...not yet. They're close to a fully 
working machine, but they were hoping for some funding... Daddy 
is like 'oh, so I'm supposed to be impressed by your smooth 
talking and fancy toy over there and throw money at you in the 
hopes that it works?'
   Chrissy: Well, yes, that is basically how business 
   works.
Daddy notes that Thomas has already tried to raise money for 
this project in London, Edinburg and Milan and failed every 
time, so...what makes you think New York will be any different?

He launches into a speech about all the men in the room who 
work for him having gotten where they are through honest, hard 
work.
   Chrissy: Correction. I forgot business worked VERY 
    DIFFERENTLY in those days.
   Diandra: Yeah, now you can inherit money from your daddy 
    to start a business, manage it badly enough that you 
    can declare bankruptcy several times, take advantage of 
    every tax loophole you can find and be declared 
    "successful".
   Chrissy: Ahem. Yeah. Not that we're thinking of anybody 
    in particular.
Daddy Cushing himself started out as a steelworker and worked 
his way up the ladder. He grabs Thomas' hands to demonstrate 
how rough they are from those years of manual labor. He notes 
that when he shook Thomas' hand earlier, he noticed he had the 
soft hands of someone who has never actually had to work for 
anything. Thomas tries to say something, but Daddy Cushing 
steamrolls right over him with a demonstration of just how much 
has changed in the last century: "in America, we bank on 
effort, not privilege."
   Chrissy: [five solid minutes of wheezing laughter]

Daddy Cushing starts to walk away and Thomas yelps that all he 
has is his name, a piece of land and willpower and all he 
wanted was Mr. Cushing's time and the opportunity to prove 
himself to them. 

And we cut away before Cushing can answer either way. On a dark 
and stormy night, Cushing is dressing for some sort of fancy 
thing, fussing with the shirt straining over his gut and 
grumbling that he's going to have to start wearing a corset. In 
the background, Edith assures him that it's fine and he looks 
very handsome, but if their genders were reversed this would be 
a very different conversation. He exposits that he wishes she 
would change her mind and come with him to Mrs. McMichael's 
party because she's gone to an awful lot of TROUBLE. Oh, 
well...in that case...definitely no. Daddy smirks and says 
Thomas will be there too, if that makes a difference. Except he 
calls him Little Lord Fontleroy. He rolls his eyes and says 
apparently he has taken a liking to Eunice. 
   Chrissy: At least that's what Eunice likes to believe.
   Diandra: Mmm.

Then Daddy possibly suggests SHE has taken a liking to HIM by 
noting that he saw her spying on that meeting. She sighs and 
asks if Thomas' proposal really warranted such an attack on his 
character. Cushing is like 'nah, it wasn't the proposal, I just 
don't like him.' Then he proves that one writer who keeps 
shoehorning this line into everything BBC is on staff here by 
saying he doesn't know what it is, exactly, that he doesn't 
like about Thomas "and I don't like not knowing." Edith is like 
'from my angle he looked like an idealist getting all his hopes 
and dreams crushed'. And she's pretty sure he's not as well off 
as he acts because his beautifully tailored suit was at least a 
decade old. Daddy sighs like 'oh, you were admiring the cut of 
his suit were you? WHY WON'T YOU SUPPORT MY PREJUDICE BASED ON 
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?' Undaunted, she adds that his shoes were 
handmade and worn. A doorbell rings and Daddy is like 'oh, 
good, a distraction!' He rambles about DR. McMichael bringing 
the new motorcar to take him to the party and he's just opened 
his new practice and he's always liked her and come say hi!
   Chrissy: Gah. Women and their insistence on being in 
    LOVE with the man they marry. Ignore a perfectly good, 
    rich momma's boy because he has all the passion of a 
    dead fish in favor of a charming pretty boy with a sexy 
    accent who understands her passions and encourages her.
   Diandra: It's really an age old story. Fun fact: it's 
    actually the women in my family who try to get their 
    daughters to marry for money instead of love because 
    they want the next generation to "learn from my 
    mistakes". It fails every time, but it hasn't stopped 
    them from trying yet.
   Chrissy: Has your mother done that with you?
   Diandra: Not really. She just likes to bring it up that 
    her mother did it. I think my mother would be happy if 
    I found ANYBODY at this point. And my grandmother just 
    wants me to give her a great grandchild before she 
    dies. Even though she already has one.

Daddy arrives at the front door to greet Alan, who has his hair 
slicked back like a Ken doll and has complimented his suit with 
a distractingly large white bowtie. Edith compliments him on 
looking "smart" and he laughs that he just threw it together. 
Sure. Daddy tries to enlist Alan in coaxing Edith to the party 
and Alan is like nah, she hates "social frivolity". Edith shoos 
them toward the door, whispering at Alan to not let Daddy drink 
too much. 

Outside, Alan is like 'well, you tried.' Daddy says she's 
"stubborn to the bone" and Alan is like 'gee, where do you 
think she gets that from?' Daddy says he wasn't complaining.

Inside, Edith crawls into bed with a bunch of books because 
she's going to DIE A SPINSTER SURROUNDED BY BOOKS AND POSSIBLY 
CATS. There's a noise outside the door and she assumes it's 
Daddy come back already and asks if he forgot something. No 
response. The knob on the bedroom door rattles creepily. She 
sits up and takes off her glasses as the door opens, the knob 
still rattling crazily as it creeks open to reveal nothing. She 
approaches it hesitantly and goes to touch the handle, which 
jolts again, startling her. She starts to slam the door, but 
hesitates when she sees the creepy skeleton ghost hovering at 
the end of the hall again. The ghost reaches toward her 
suddenly and screams for no apparent reason because you really 
can't do a story about ghosts without making them irrationally 
scare the people they're trying to communicate with.
   Chrissy: Here we go. I think I've heard this rant 
    before.
   Diandra: I'm just saying, if you're reaching out to the 
    person who can actually see and hear you, maybe don't 
    try to push him out of an open window or shove her hair 
    in a garbage disposal in order to get their attention.
   Chrissy: Those are...very specific examples.
   Diandra: Yes, from two different shows starring 
    different cast members from "Party of Five". My point 
    is that it's very obvious that writers for movies and 
    television can't shake the idea that ghosts HAVE to be 
    scary. Even "reality" ghost hunters always have them 
    act excitable and scream when they hear the voice on 
    the tape answering their questions. 

Edith presses her ear to the closed door and calms her 
breathing a little before asking "what is it? What do you 
want?" The ghost slams right through the door and grabs her by 
the shoulders, hissing "beware of Crimson Peak!" She yanks away 
and crawls across the floor as the ghost pulls back into the 
hall. The door starts to open again and she braces herself, but 
it's just the maid, wondering if she's okay and why she's on 
the floor. Edith is like 'no, I'm fine. FINE. WHAT DO YOU 
WANT?' The maid says there's a Thomas Sharpe at the door, 
dripping wet and insisting that he wants to come in.
   Chrissy: Oh, sure, send him right up.
   Diandra: To the bedroom?
   Chrissy: [evil grin] Yes, well, I can't exactly help him 
    with those wet clothes in the middle of the foyer, can 
    I?
   Diandra: Might be able to warm himself in front of the 
    fire though.
   Chrissy: Pfffft. Fire. Everybody knows body heat is far 
    more effective.
   Diandra: Is this fanfiction or porn you're writing?
   Chrissy: There's a difference?

Edith says no, Annie, absolutely not, just tell him to go away. 
Annie says she tried that already and he insisted on talking to 
Edith.

So she goes downstairs where Thomas is sitting on a bench, 
waiting, looking not nearly as wet as Annie described.
   Chrissy: Oh, sorry, did I say HE was the one who was 
    wet? My bad.
   Diandra: Walked right into that one...
He jumps up at the sight of Edith and asks if she's okay 
because she seems "a little pale". As opposed to what? She says 
no, not really, and somewhat awkwardly notes that her father 
isn't home. Thomas is like 'er...yeah, I know. I was waiting in 
the bushes for him to leave. Hence why I'm all wet.' Edith is 
like 'er...okaaaaaaay, this isn't at ALL creepy.' He says he's 
headed to the McMichael house. She notes that he is NOWHERE 
near that. "You're very very lost." He says yes, he is and he 
was hoping she could help him. You see, he was really hoping 
she would go with him and act as his...uh...translator. Yeah, 
that's it. Because he doesn't speak whatever these Americans 
are claiming is English.
   Chrissy: You get this from the British side of your 
    family?
   Diandra: Any British members of my family are pretty far 
    removed, but yes, we have heard the joke about visiting 
    England so we can learn the language. My dad actually 
    loves to recount that story. Thinks it's hilarious 
    given that he is only a couple generations removed.

He suggests she would enjoy it far more than staying here in 
this big empty house all night. She looks around uncomfortably 
and thunder crashes as if even the weather is emphasizing his 
point.
   Chrissy: Well, it helps when your brother is the God of 
   thunder.

So we cut to the party, where Jessica Chastain is finishing an 
overly dramatic piece on the piano. She turns toward the 
applauding crowd, scowling, and pulls part of the material of 
her dress over her left hand and the big, clunky ring on her 
finger. She finally smiles a little as a woman kisses her cheek 
and hands her some flowers and looks eagerly at the doorway as 
Thomas and Edith arrive. The crowd parts to let them in and 
Jessica briefly gets a jealous look that most women would 
recognize instantly.

Alan wanders over to stand beside her as they approach. Edith 
introduces Thomas to Alan and tells Thomas he's the best doctor 
in town. Alan says he's heard a lot about Thomas already since 
the women in his family won't shut up about him, but he "had a 
little trouble understanding your title." Luckily, Edith was 
able to explain what it means. Thomas is like 'yeah, okay, I 
will be ignoring you now.' He introduces Edith to Jessica - who 
is playing his sister Lucille. Lucille gives a clipped greeting 
and complains that Edith made her brother so late to the party. 
She kisses him and whispers "now's the time". Then she keeps 
rambling about Eunice being convinced that nobody in this 
country knows how to dance a waltz like nothing happened just 
there. Eunice flounces up, takes his hand and leads him to the 
dance floor without bothering to ask for permission or 
anything.

Mum McMichael announces that the baronet is going to 
demonstrate a waltz for them and everybody needs to clear the 
dance floor. Edith runs over to apologize to Mrs. McMichael as 
she backs into the crowd and Mrs. McMichael gives her a cryptic 
"don't worry, my child. Everybody has their place. I'll make 
sure you find yours."
   Chrissy: Ah, yes. The passive aggressive presumptive 
    mother-in-law.
   Diandra: I'm pretty sure the only one presuming anything 
    is her father and even that is just wishful thinking.
   Chrissy: Right. She'll probably breathe a sigh of relief 
    when Edith runs off with Thomas because she was never 
    good enough for her perfect little boy.

Thomas starts the demonstration by giving a shitty description 
of what a waltz is and saying it's really not that complicated, 
but... He takes a candle from someone passing by with a 
candelabra and says the trick is to do it so swiftly, 
delicately and smoothly that the lead dancer can hold a lit 
candle in one hand the entire time and the flame won't go out. 
For a second as he's saying this, he stands in front of Alan 
and I have the brief hope that maybe they will dance with each 
other, but no.
   Chrissy: Always a slasher at heart.
He says to accomplish that trick, he needs a perfect partner. 
Then he walks right past Eunice as the smile slides off her 
face and holds his hand out to Edith. She looks at Eunice and 
hisses uh...no? Thanks? Shouldn't you be asking Eunice? He 
insists that he's asking HER, not Eunice. She takes his hand 
hesitantly and they take their position on the floor. He looks 
to Lucille at the piano, who sniffs derisively before starting 
a waltz.

Thomas wraps their clasped hands around the candle. "Why are we 
doing this," she hisses as she positions her other arm on his 
shoulder. He suggests she close her eyes as he finds that 
usually makes uncomfortable things easier for him. She says she 
doesn't WANT to close her eyes and stares right at him as they 
start dancing.
   Chrissy: Smart girl.
They circle around the floor a few times, the camera cutting 
away a few times as the candle looks about to snuff, and we 
briefly focus on Eunice looking somewhere between nauseous and 
murderous. When they finish, the candle is still lit. Edith 
blows it out. Lucille gets up from the piano stiffly and stalks 
past a dazed looking Daddy Cushing. 

And then for some reason, Owen Harper is wandering through some 
hallways somewhere.
   Chrissy: Goddamn it, why can't we ever be rid of him?
   Diandra: And all those years recapping Torchwood just 
    came back to haunt me.
He finds Daddy Cushing in a public shower room, shaving in 
front of a sink. Daddy greets him as "Mr. Holly" and he does 
not look jolly.
   Chrissy: Okay, I'm putting you in a corner for five 
   minutes so you can think about what you just did.

Daddy says he loves coming to the club first thing in the 
morning because he practically has it all to himself. Then he 
gets right down to business, handing Holly a piece of paper 
with Thomas and Lucille's names on it and saying he wants him 
to investigate them because something about them is NOT RIGHT.

Meanwhile...I guess...time markers are kind of arbitrary in 
this movie so far...Edith goes to visit Alan at his office. 
He's in the middle of checking a patient's eyes and chastising 
him for not using the drops he prescribed. He gives the guy 
another prescription. Edith is drawn to the bookcase against 
the wall and starts reading off the titles, which all have to 
do with eyes, so...guess he's not a general practitioner? Then 
she finds Arthur Conan Doyle, which...I mean, he was a doctor, 
so that would be legitimate. But since she asks if he "fancies" 
himself a detective, I guess we can assume that either it is 
Sherlock Holmes or Edith doesn't realize Doyle was more than a 
fiction writer. Alan shrugs and says he's an ophthalmologist 
too. Yeah, after first becoming a GP and surgeon. Aren't you 
young to have already skipped that far ahead? I mean, outside 
of the Hollywood idea of how long it takes to get a degree? 
Alan says enough about his book collection: "I think you're 
going to like what I have to show you."
   Chrissy: It's really never as impressive as you think it 
   is, buddy. 

She helps him pull some shades over a skylight while he 
prefaces the presentation by saying that ghost photography is 
very easy to fake, but impossible if you use glass plates. He 
pulls out a box of plates he bought in London and hands her 
one, then points to the screen where he has a projector showing 
another one that appears to have three ghostly figures hovering 
over the heads of two women. He thinks there are some places 
that - through some sort of chemistry of the Earth - can retain 
impressions. Okay, yes, he really is Arthur Conan Doyle in his 
later years. He pops in a different slide which has the much 
creepier image of a screaming ghost standing behind a prostrate 
girl who may be dead because corpse photography was still a BIG 
thing in those days. Then he starts rambling about how that man 
he was just prescribing drops to is color blind and will never 
see the colors red or green, but accepts that they exist 
because everybody around him can see them. Which is a funny 
sort of way of explaining that just because somebody doesn't 
SEE something doesn't mean it isn't there. She suggests people 
only see things when the time comes for them to see them, which 
is either profound or idiotic depending on how you interpret 
it. They have a MOMENT and she busies herself with the slides, 
saying he never talked to her about this interest he has in the 
supernatural. He says she never gave him a chance to.

The next picture just looks like a degraded photo of three 
people where the one standing in the middle is just a washed 
out Uncle Fester. Alan nonsequiturs that he understands her 
fascination with the Sharpe siblings, but he urges her to 
"proceed with caution". Mmkay. So this whole "I believe in 
ghosts" thing was just a way to get through to her, right? 
Because this expository scene is kind of awkwardly shoehorned 
in here.

So now we're...in a park...at some ill defined time...and 
Thomas is raving about how Edith's story gets better every time 
he reads it as they walk. She wants him to take a look at some 
changes and he promises to finish it right now. He sits in a 
little slingback chair somebody just left in the grass and 
Edith wanders over to find Lucille carefully snipping a cocoon 
from a tree branch. The ground under the branch is littered 
with dead and dying butterflies. "They take their heat from the 
sun and when it deserts them they die," Lucille sighs. Edith 
thinks that's sad. Lucille insists that's nature, which is 
cruel and unforgiving and full of things trying to eat each 
other. She picks up a barely fluttering butterfly and strokes 
Edith's cheek with it, murmuring that beautiful things are 
FRAGILE.
   Chrissy: I don't know about Edith, but Lucille is 
   definitely a Mary Shelley.

Edith kind of looks at her uncomfortably and Lucille lowers the 
butterfly. She rambles about the black moths they have at home, 
which are not pretty but they thrive in the dark, cold wetness 
that is England like, nine months out of the year. She puts the 
dying butterfly down and we get a gruesome shot of ants 
crawling all over it and eating out its eyes.

And then suddenly Lucille and Thomas are huddled by a tree, 
looking at Edith in the distance. Lucille asks if Thomas is 
sure because "I don't think she's the right choice. She's too 
young."
   Chrissy: You know, it might just be because we're coming 
    off of "Only Lovers Left Alive" or it might be the 
    sunglasses he's wearing, but this could totally be 
    interpreted as them being vampires.
   Diandra: Sure, except for the fact that they're out in 
    daylight.
   Chrissy: Minor detail.
Thomas says he has already EXPLAINED all of this and he needs 
the ring. She pulls the ring we were focusing on earlier from 
her finger and sneers that it is HERS and she WILL be wanting 
it back. "Then you'd better hope I'm successful," he says, 
taking it from her. Because he says it's the last thing they 
have to sell. She says he's not SELLING it. They're buying 
something with it.

Owen Holly is inspecting a bridge model in Daddy Cushing's 
office when Daddy Cushing appears and asks if there's a 
problem. Holly says yeah, he likes to deliver the news himself 
when it's bad. He hands Daddy an envelope. Daddy starts to open 
it, but Holly insists he not do that here.

So Thomas, Lucille and Edith are heading into a dining room - 
presumably that night - when Thomas rounds on Edith and asks if 
he can talk to her privately. She tells him to wait a minute 
while she retrieves Daddy and scampers off. He looks at the 
ring clutched in his hand and sighs. Then he just follows her, 
catching up just after she has interrupted Daddy's reading of 
whatever was in the envelope to tell him they're waiting on him 
to start dinner. Thomas nervously starts to build toward the 
question he wants to ask her, but Daddy interrupts to demand 
that he go find his sister and bring her to the study so they 
can have a TALK. Edith slinks off to tell the guests that it 
will be a while yet.

And we go right to the two siblings in Daddy's office while 
Daddy preambles about the instant dislike he took to Thomas 
when they first met. Thomas is like 'oh, really? I didn't 
notice.' Daddy is like 'yeah, well...I like you even less now.' 
Lucille asks what this is all about and Daddy hands her a file 
and rants about Thomas "repeatedly engaging socially with my 
daughter."
   Chrissy: Aren't Victorian euphemisms cute?
In fact, he's pretty sure Thomas is falling in love with her. 
He didn't really have a good reason to hate him and try to keep 
her away from him until he saw the document at the top of the 
file. He shoves it in Thomas' hands. Thomas glares at him and 
Daddy notes that that's the first "honest" expression he's seen 
from him. Thomas asks if she knows. Daddy says no, but he'll 
tell her if Thomas doesn't get the hell out.

Daddy writes a check and approaches Lucille, noting that she 
seems to have a better head on her shoulders than her brother. 
He gives the check to her and says it's contingent on them 
being on a train to New York City in the morning. Also...he 
insists that Thomas break Edith's heart - presumably to stop 
her from pining.

So at dinner, Daddy announces an "unexpected announcement" and 
turns to Thomas. Thomas is still staring daggers at Daddy, but 
he obediently gives an overly flowery and formal announcement 
of his and Lucille's impending trip back to England. Edith 
starts gasping and gulping and runs away from the table the 
second he's finished talking. He runs after her and blathers 
that they have to attend to their "interests" back home and 
it's not like there's anything KEEPING them in America, so... 
"I see," she mutters and starts to storm up the stairs. Thomas 
says he finished the new chapters of her book and he'll have 
them delivered to her in the morning. Would she still like to 
know what he thinks? She's like 'ugh...FINE.' He goes on a rant 
about how she doesn't seem to understand the depths of emotion 
she is trying to describe - only what she has read in OTHER 
people's stories. She snaps at him to stop, but he just gets in 
her face and growls that she insists on describing "the 
torments" of love despite clearly knowing NOTHING about love 
because she is living in an era where women were basically kept 
innocent until marriage. She tries to run past him and he 
blocks her and barks that he's not finished berating her yet. 
He asks what she dreams of. "A kind man? A pure soul to be 
redeemed? A wounded bird you can nourish? Perfection has no 
place in love, Edith." He says she should go back to writing 
about ghosts and whatever other fanciful bullshit she can come 
up with because she is a spoiled brat who CANNOT do love 
stories. 

The party guests all gather behind them just in time for her to 
slap him and storm up the stairs. And I didn't notice this 
until I saw a gifset of this scene, but when he turns his head 
you can see tears under his left eye. Daddy looks at him like 
'well, I guess that works.'

Morning. Presumably. Daddy is in the club bathroom again. He 
places a breakfast order with a butler, who scuttles off to 
have it filled. Then he starts shaving and we get a pretty 
standard horror movie scene of something moving on the other 
side of the room and him having to go see what it is, finding 
nothing. The water he forgot to shut off starts spilling out of 
the sink onto the floor, the force of it knocking off the razor 
he left on the edge. He turns off the water and kneels to pick 
up the blade. Someone steps up behind him, pulling on a pair of 
black gloves and he looks up and clearly sees their face before 
his head is slammed repeatedly into the sink with gross 
crunching noises until the corner of the sink actually breaks. 
He slumps to the floor and bloody water goes everywhere.

Edith is still in bed, still dressed, part of her book spread 
out beside her under her reading glasses. Annie the maid wakes 
her to announce that Thomas Sharpe delivered that part of her 
manuscript as promised. Edith grumbles at her to just leave it 
on the desk and starts to go back to sleep. Annie asks if she 
should leave the letter there too. Edith's eyes snap open, but 
she just says yes and waits for Annie to leave before pouncing 
on it. 

Thomas gives a long winded apology in voiceover for having to 
leave her, but her father made it clear that he is not worthy 
of her as he is basically poor. He agreed with Daddy's 
assessment and followed his suggestion of putting on that 
performance at dinner to try to discourage her. He ends the 
letter by saying he plans to convince her father that he is 
worthy and come back for her. She puts on a coat and races to 
the hotel the siblings were staying in. The man at the desk 
gives her the room numbers and fails to stop her from running 
to one of them and finding the maids already cleaning. One of 
the maids explains that they already checked out so they could 
catch the early train. 

Edith does a slow, dejected walk back toward the front door and 
runs right into Thomas. He says Lucille left, but he couldn't 
bring himself to despite her father's attempts to strong arm 
him. He spews a monologue about how he can't stop thinking 
about her and he feels like there's some sort of link between 
their hearts and if they were separated he would just DIE.
   Chrissy: Now do it in French.
   Diandra: Was that a reference to my fic?
   Chrissy: Mmm. Thank you for repeatedly making me picture 
    Tom saying tragically romantic shit in two languages,  
    by the way.
They kiss and he totally lets her control it.

They go back to...presumably her house, where some somber 
looking men greet her, obviously bringing bad news. They are 
both brought to the morgue so she can identify her father's 
body. Before they can uncover it though, Alan swoops in to 
offer condolences and volunteer to confirm the identity so she 
doesn't have to face the gruesome sight of a dead body because, 
you know, that might be too traumatic for the little woman. A 
man who claims to be Daddy's lawyer (Ferguson) says he can't 
let Alan do that because identification has to be made by a 
member of the family. Edith marches over and pulls the sheet 
back herself, wincing and staggering back at the sight of his 
caved-in head. The coroner, Alan and Ferguson all discuss how 
such a thing could happen and it's obvious they believe it was 
an accident and nobody saw anything.
   Chrissy: Yeah, he just slipped on the wet floor and hit 
   his head. Six or seven times. He always was clumsy.

Alan bends to inspect the wound and then asks the other men to 
help him turn the body over. Edith goes all emotional and 
demands they stop touching him and pulls the sheet back over 
his face, then over his hand because it's SO COLD. Then she 
just falls on Thomas, who has been just standing in the 
background not really doing anything, and cries.

We get another funeral that looks exactly the same as the first 
except this time adult Edith is standing under an umbrella with 
Thomas. Alan is staring at them from the other side of the 
passing coffin and tips his hat at Thomas like '.......fine, 
you win.' We zoom in on the hand Edith has on Thomas' chest 
like we're in an old silent film. She is wearing the ring.

We pan back in on Allerdale Hall, as the fancy gate entrance 
identifies it. It's a big, spooky mansion in the middle of 
nowhere (or as the chyron locates it: Cumberland, England). The 
path leading up to the mansion and the area immediately around 
it is made up of that red clay Thomas was showing off. An old 
man Thomas identifies as Finlay greets the carriage. Thomas 
introduces him to his new "wife". Finlay just nods at Edith and 
says he knows, "you've been married a while." He wanders away 
and Edith asks what he meant by that. Thomas is like 'yeah, I 
don't know. I think he might be going senile.' A small dog runs 
up to Edith yapping and she bends to greet him, noting that 
Thomas never told her they have a dog. Apparently realizing 
instantly that he doesn't belong to the Sharpe's she asks if he 
could be a stray. Thomas says the nearest house is in a town 
half a day's walk away. I would say that doesn't mean anything 
since pets have been known to travel for miles on their own, 
but the dog doesn't look scrappy enough to have been living 
outside for any length of time. Edith notes that the poor baby 
is half-starved and asks if they can keep him. Thomas is like 
'yes, dear.'
   Chrissy: You just totally blew an opportunity to make a 
    reference to The Princess Bride.
   Diandra: Why, because he actually said "as you wish"? 
    Pffffftttt. Nah.

Thomas picks Edith up and carries her across the threshold into 
the mansion, the dog running ahead and disappearing like he 
knows exactly where he's going. Edith boggles at the creepy, 
gothic entrance area and asks how many rooms the place has. I 
would have asked why there's a hole in the middle of the 
ceiling over the enormous open space allowing snow to fall 
right into the house, but whatever. She kind of gets to that 
when she notes that it's actually colder inside than out.
   Chrissy: Hmm, yes. We'll just have to find ways to keep 
    ourselves warm. 
   Diandra: ...............
   Chrissy: ...............Dee?
   Diandra: Oh, you were expecting me to set you up? Okay. 
    [rolls eyes] I suppose you have some ideas of how to do 
    that?
   Chrissy: ..........nevermind. 
   Diandra: What?

Thomas apologizes for the pitiful state of the house and says 
they do their best to maintain it, but they just can't stop the 
cold and rain eating away at it. Have...you tried fixing the 
roof? Does the hole just reform immediately? He steps on a 
board and red oozes up through the cracks in the floor as he 
adds that the house is sinking right into the mines. Edith asks 
how he and Lucille manage it all by themselves. He grumbles 
that they were born into that "privilege" and can't just give 
it up. Anyway, he says he looks forward to showing her his 
workshop in the attic and disappears up the stairs after 
Finlay, who is carrying their luggage.

Edith wanders over to look in a mirror while she takes her hat 
off, belatedly noticing the dead and dying bugs scattered in 
front of it. As she's frowning at this, a ghostly figure 
appears in the mirror somewhere behind her and hisses her name. 
She turns and does the stupid horror movie female thing: 
heading right toward the place the ghost disappeared and 
calling "Lucille?" She finds an elevator that seems to be going 
up, but gets distracted by the dog again. The dog drops a red 
ball at her feet. She picks it up and wonders aloud where he 
found it.
   Chrissy: I took it from the dead clown in the basement. 
   Don't go into the basement.

Thomas wanders back to find her and she blurts that she just 
saw a woman in the elevator. He looks at the elevator and says 
um...Lucille? She says no, it wasn't her. Thomas brushes it off 
as a "shadow" and says the elevator sometimes moves on its own 
because the perpetual dampness screws with the wiring. Then he 
adds as an afterthought that she should NEVER go below the main 
level of the house because...uh...clay pits. Before she can ask 
further questions, the dog runs to greet Lucille coming around 
the corner. She asks what "this thing" is doing in the house.
   Chrissy: I married her. Remember, sis?
Thomas goes to hug her for an uncomfortably long time (although 
I probably didn't notice anything weird the first time I saw 
this movie and didn't know where this was all headed). 

She rambles about sending Findlay to pick up his machine parts 
from the post office while he helps her out of her coat. Then 
she looks Edith up and down and asks what's wrong with her. 
Thomas says she was startled by a shadow. Lucille says well, 
you should get used to it because this house is full of 
shadows. Edith thinks she can fix that and from now on the 
house will be nothing but love and friendship and warmth. She 
kisses Lucille on the cheek. Lucille stands stiff as a board 
and gives her a brittle smile like 'Thomas? She's touching me. 
Why is she touching me? Make it stop.' She points out to Thomas 
that his wife's hands are frozen and he apologizes and offers 
to take her upstairs and start a fire.
   Chrissy: Already WAY ahead of you on that one.
Actually, he offers to run her a bath and warns that the water 
will be red when it first starts running because of the clay, 
but it clears after a bit. Edith stops before they leave the 
room to ask Lucille if she'll get her a copy of the house key 
when she gets a chance. Lucille is like 'yeah, no.' She says 
there are parts of the house that are unsafe, so she needs to 
get to know the boundaries for a few days and THEN they'll 
consider giving her the keys if she still thinks she needs 
them. Edith doesn't seem to see this as a red flag, so she just 
smirks and toddles off after Thomas.

So apparently Thomas changed his mind because next thing we see 
is Edith running the bath herself. The heater and pipes rattle 
noisily for several seconds before the red tinted water comes 
gushing out.

Downstairs, Lucille grumbles that she thought Thomas said the 
dog was dead. He sits at the table beside her with a metal 
canister and says it SHOULD be because he left it out there 
alone figuring it would just freeze to death. Lucille wonders 
how it has been surviving "all this time" on scraps and sighs 
that it is just like them. He scoops something from the 
canister into a teapot and says they won't have to live on 
scraps anymore. She says Edith's money isn't here yet, though. 
He says she needs to trust him. She reaches to turn his face 
toward her and asks WHY he chose HER.

And we cut to Edith sitting in the bath before he can answer. 
She's looking around at the enormous, cold house making all 
sorts of creaking and groaning noises and wonders what the hell 
she was thinking (probably). The dog runs in, drops the ball at 
the foot of the tub and yaps at her. She obediently throws it 
for him to fetch. She does it twice and the second time the dog 
doesn't come back. Anyone who has owned a dog that isn't a Lab 
or Golden knows this is not unusual, and she isn't 
perturbed...until she notices the distinctly human like figure 
moving at the end of the hall leading away from the bathroom. 
The camera moves so Edith can climb from the tub and put on a 
lacy gown. Then we get a long shot of her with her back to the 
hallway while the ghost creeps toward her, reaching out a hand 
with unnaturally long fingers and coming close enough that we 
can see the partly-missing skeletal face and that the entire 
body is blood red. It opens it's half-toothless mouth and 
shrieks and Edith startles and turns to see...nothing.

The dog runs back to greet her, sans ball, and seems entirely 
uninterested in finding it again as he ignores her questions 
about where it went and just keeps demanding she pet him. The 
ball rolls down the hall toward her and the dog yaps at her as 
she stares at the empty hallway it came from.
   Chrissy: I can't remember...please tell me the dog 
    didn't end up like the cat in "Shape of Water".
   Diandra: No. Guillermo Del Torro always manages to put 
    some very specific gross-out moments in every movie, 
    but I'm pretty sure that wasn't one of them.
   Chrissy: So just the facial mutilation kink?
   Diandra: I hate that I know exactly what you're talking 
    about.

Downstairs, Edith sits in front of the fire as Thomas brings 
her tea.
   Chrissy: So did you get the idea that Henry was putting 
    the drug in Sherlock's tea from this movie too?
   Diandra: Why am I starting to think this is the real 
    reason you wanted to do this recap?
   Chrissy: [innocent smile] I have no idea what you're 
    talking about.
   Diandra: I'm sure. No, I think I got the idea from 
    another fanfic and just generally realized that it was 
    the best way to ensure he ingested it. I know I had the 
    idea BEFORE I saw this movie because I very distinctly 
    remember watching it and thinking "son of a BITCH!"
He says it's "firethorn berries" and guesses that she doesn't 
like it by the face she makes when she drinks it. She's like 
'no, no...[gulp] it's fine. Just a little...bitter.'
   Chrissy: Oh, that's just the poison. Don't worry about 
    it.
   Diandra: Yeah, you know...literally, that's why humans 
    developed a sensitivity to bitterness. Most toxins in 
    nature are bitter.
Thomas grumbles some philosophical bullshit about everything 
that grows in this area needing to be at least a little bitter 
to avoid being eaten.

Thomas goes to poke the fire and it roars just as the wind 
howls very noisily outside. Edith squawks and dives to the 
floor beside him like PROTECT ME! He says it's okay, it's just 
the east wind.
   Diandra: Aw, fuck. DO NOT SAY IT.
   Chrissy: Say what?
   Diandra: Do not make reference to the character of whose 
    name we do not speak.
   Chrissy: Oh, East Wind. No, that would only make sense 
    if Benedict was playing Thomas as was apparently 
    originally planned.
   Diandra: You know, I literally can't imagine how...odd 
    that casting would have been.
   Chrissy: You almost said Strange, didn't you?
   Diandra: Ugh.
He says the chimneys form a sort of vacuum when the wind picks 
up and if the windows are all shuttered, it sounds like the 
whole house is sort of...breathing.
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's it. It's the house. Not the half a 
   dozen ghosts living in it.

He plops her back in the chair and presses the teacup back in 
her hands, announcing that he's going to go take a bath and he 
won't wake her if she falls asleep.
   Chrissy: Oh, please do. And don't bother putting clothes 
    on. 
   Diandra: I don't know why you didn't just join me 
    earlier and save on hot water.
   Chrissy: Ahem, yes. I'm starting to think we should have 
    invited Emilio to help us with this recap so he could 
    keep us on track.
   Diandra: Hey, if we can't handle this, there's no way 
    we're going to handle THAT scene in "The Night 
    Manager".
   Chrissy: Well, we'll find out soon enough. There's a 
    similar scene in this movie.
   Diandra: I take back what I said before. Clearly THIS is 
    the reason you wanted to do this movie.

We pan through a keyhole as he's leaving to see Lucille 
watching them from the next room.

Morning. Edith gasps awake and finds herself in a bed with 
Thomas fast asleep on the other side. She sneaks from the room 
and goes downstairs, following the sound of music playing. It's 
Lucille, playing a piano. Edith wanders closer to a roaring 
fire and reads the Latin inscription on the mantle. Lucille, 
who has eyes in the back of her head, translates it out loud as 
"to the hills we raise our eyes."
   Chrissy: At least I hope that's what it says. My Latin 
   is a little rusty. It could be "the hills have eyes".
Edith apologizes for interrupting her and asks what that music 
is she's playing. She says it's an old lullaby she used to sing 
to Thomas when they were little. 

Edith blathers her imaginings of the two of them growing up in 
this house with her playing music and him inventing shit.
   Chrissy: Their parents making occasional animal 
   sacrifices to appease the house demons in the basement.
Lucille says they weren't allowed "in here" - they were 
confined to the nursery in the attic.
   Chrissy: Well, that is as far from the demons as they 
   could get.
They knew their mother had come home when they could hear her 
playing the piano downstairs. Edith notices a painting of 
"mother", a gray haired, mean looking woman who is very 
blatantly showing off the familiar looking ring on her finger.  
Edith fidgets with the ring uncomfortably and mutters that she 
looks...um... "Horrible?" Lucille prompts. She stops playing 
and comes to stand beside Edith, saying that the painting is an 
EXCELLENT likeness of the old bat. "I like to think she can see 
us from up there," she muses. "I don't want her to miss a 
single thing we do." She smiles in a way that will definitely 
give this statement new meaning by the end of this movie.

Lucille takes Edith into the library, which is slightly bigger 
than my personal collection.
   Chrissy: For those of you who don't personally know 
    Diandra, her collection might actually be big enough to 
    qualify as an official library.
   Diandra: I am honestly so close to putting actual 
    barcodes on stuff and buying a scanning wand. Then 
    maybe I can start charging overdue fees for stuff 
    people borrow and never return for years.
   Chrissy: I said I'll get it back to you!
Lucille says most of the collection was built by her mother. 
She asks as she pulls a book out of a special locked cabinet if 
Edith has ever heard of something called "fore edge 
illustration". It's when you hide an image along the side of 
the pages in such a way that it is only visible if you curl the 
pages slightly. She demonstrates with the book to reveal what 
looks like a picture from the Kama Sutra of a couple 69ing each 
other. Because of course one of the first uses of such a skill 
would be to hide pornography in plain sight. One of the 
enduring truths of human nature: every cool thing that has ever 
been invented or discovered has always been immediately used 
either to kill people or for sex. People who think the Internet 
can be cleansed of all questionable content for the sake of the 
children clearly know nothing about human nature.
   Chrissy: Yeah, you should see the bathhouse in Pompeii. 
    The walls are covered with the equivalent of "for a 
    good time, call..."
   Diandra: For more immediate results, use the glory hole 
    on the next wall?
   Chrissy: Basically.

Edith frowns at the image and Lucille laughs that this can't 
possibly shock her now that she and Thomas have...you know... 
Edith is like 'er...I knew I was missing a step somewhere.' She 
claims he was being respectful of the fact that she is in 
mourning. They didn't even share a room on the ship over. 
Lucille is like 'oh...well, then...' She puts the book back in 
the locked cabinet and cryptically states that "in time 
everything will be right."

Back in America, Ferguson is bemoaning to Alan that they have 
to liquidate Daddy Cushing's estate. Alan thinks maybe they're 
doing it too soon after his death and Ferguson just shrugs and 
ambles off to talk to the movers. Alan notices a checkbook on 
Daddy Cushing's desk with a recent stub for a check to Thomas 
Sharpe. He frowns into the distance as his brain struggles to 
put clues together. Then we get a brief shot of him frowning at 
the newly replaced sink in the club men's room.

And then we're back in England. Edith takes the elevator to the 
attic, carrying the dog that is apparently not important enough 
to name with her. She is looking at some old drawings scrawled 
on the walls that are covered in moths when there is a sound 
like a woman moaning somewhere deeper in the attic. The dog has 
disappeared again, which I suppose just proves that dogs are 
smarter than humans.
   Chrissy: Or that he's somehow responsible for the weird 
   shit that keeps happening around Edith. 
She wanders around, past an old wheelchair that we linger on 
for reasons that aren't clear because it doesn't move or 
anything.
   Chrissy: It wouldn't be very dramatic if it did. It's a 
    clunky contraption made by nailing wheels to a wicker 
    chair. If it was a rocking chair, however...
   Diandra: It would be rocking ominously and we would be 
    groaning about how very CLICH� this is.
   Chrissy: Exactly.

Edith wanders right out of the room the elevator was in and 
into Thomas' shop where he is crouched over something with a 
plaid shawl draped over him because everything is wide open to 
the elements. He looks up, smiles and asks if she likes the 
workshop.
   Chrissy: Yeah, well...aside from the draft and the cloud 
   of moths in every room on this level...
She indicates a little wooden toy on a desk and asks if he made 
it. He says he used to carve them for Lucille. "Little trinkets 
to keep her happy." When did that stop working? Because she has 
obviously been Princess Dark Cloud for quite some time. Edith 
asks if he spent a lot of time alone in the attic. He says 
yeah, well...their father travelled a lot, working very hard at 
spending the family fortune. He starts up a mechanical toy and 
smiles at the look of delight on her face. Then she looks away 
and the smile just melts right off. "You're so different," he 
murmurs. She grins and cluelessly asks who she's different 
from. He's like 'er...nothing. I didn't mean anything by that. 
Never mind.'

She leans in to kiss him and it goes from sweet to foreplay in, 
like, .3 seconds. He lifts her onto a desk and fumbles with her 
skirts a little and then freezes as a door squeaks. Lucille 
comes into the shop with a tray of tea, the dog at her heels. 
She says she found him wandering in the halls. Edith gushes at 
Lucille's kindness bringing them tea and Thomas just scowls at 
her in exactly the manner one would expect from a guy abruptly 
cock blocked. He picks up the dog, who is pawing at his leg and 
politely declines the tea in the manner of no Englishman ever. 
Lucille plops a sugar in one cup and hands it to Edith, 
pointedly saying it will "warm" her and watching while she 
drinks. And I'm starting to understand how readers of my story 
figured out early on that the tea was meddled with, because boy 
is this obvious. There's a long moment where Thomas and Lucille 
stare at each other and the dog lets out a very big, loud yawn.
   Chrissy: Oh, who asked you?
   Diandra: I think I love that dog. 
   Chrissy: Have you ever met a dog you didn't love?
   Diandra: Eh...probably not.

Sometime during the night, Edith wakes abruptly to pain in her 
stomach.
   Chrissy: Am I pregnant? Is that how it works? We just 
   have to sleep in the same bed? I don't know, my mother 
   never taught me anything about sex and the schools are 
   several decades from mandatory sex ed.
She hears the dog barking somewhere in the distance and some 
faint singing that may or may not be Lucille and reaches for 
the empty side of the bed where Thomas should be.

She goes wandering the halls with a candlestick, the dog 
joining her and happily trotting through a door that just opens 
by itself in the direction of the singing. She wanders around 
for a while as the house creaks and groans. She hears 
scratching coming from inside a room and, assuming the dog 
somehow found himself trapped, starts to open the door. She has 
it open about a foot before the dog appears at the end of the 
hall and barks at her. She freezes and we get a brief glimpse 
of a red faced person through the crack in the door before it 
slams shut again. Edith jolts, hesitates, then opens the door 
to find a dusty closet with a box full of wax cylinder 
recordings. For anyone who doesn't know what those are, they 
were the precursor to vinyl records and there was a big news 
story in recent years about historians playing some that were 
still intact. They basically always sound like creepy ghostly 
recordings. Edith shrugs and closes the closet door. A low moan 
comes from behind her and she turns as what is left of a woman 
comes up through the floor in the middle of the hall and crawls 
toward her. The dog yips in alarm and runs away. Because of 
course dogs and small children can always see ghosts. Edith 
follows the dog belatedly to the elevator and takes it back 
down to relative safety. 

Or not. Because they are now in the basement. The dog runs off 
to start sniffing at the base of some tunnels poking up through 
the floor. Edith finds a switch to turn on lights in the 
ceiling and curiously wanders over to inspect a trunk stamped 
with the initials E.S. She sweeps some gunk off the hinge of 
the lock to find the word...or name "Enola". And then a ghost 
bursts right out of the trunk, startling her into tripping and 
dropping the candles, setting herself on fire. No, not really. 
Because in case you haven't seen the pattern so far, while this 
movie does have some of the expected horror movie beats, it 
takes abrupt left turns to avoid others. So we snap right to 
morning with Thomas outside inspecting the clay harvester. 
Which makes the same slow train engine puffing noise we heard 
at the very beginning of the movie.

Thomas is futzing with it and ordering Finlay to get more coal 
when Edith calls him over to talk. He says now isn't a good 
time and suggests she talk to Lucille instead if it's that 
important. She insists she needs to talk to HIM. He sighs and 
asks what this is about. She asks if anyone died in the house. 
He laughs and says the house is hundreds of years old, 
so...yeah, probably some. She clarifies that she is referring 
to violent, sudden deaths that have happened in the house. He 
brushes her off and runs back to tend to the machine, burning 
himself when a gust of steam comes from the area he was 
fiddling with.

So Edith wraps his hand in the kitchen, apparently not taking 
the opportunity to continue the conversation. He notes that his 
hands are starting to get rough and her father would probably 
approve. Then he grumbles that it doesn't matter because the 
machine will never work and he's just deluding himself. He 
keeps rambling about how he brought her to this awful place and 
she married a failure until she finally tells him to knock it 
off. "You're all that I have," she says.
   Chrissy: Yes. Convenient, that.
   Diandra: Almost as if someone got rid of Daddy to ensure 
    it.
Thomas looks out the window and notes that they're racing 
against the snow and the workers will leave when it gets dark. 
He offhandedly notes that once it snows it will be apparent why 
the locals call the place Crimson Peak. Edith practically drops 
the vial of medicine she was putting back in a box, gulps, and 
asks him to repeat that. He says yeah, the red clay pushes up 
through the ground and stains the snow bright red. He grabs his 
coat and runs back to work while she stands frozen in place, 
blinking and gaping.
   Chrissy: I mean...who could have known that the Crimson 
   Peak the ghost kept warning me about was a spooky 
   mansion on top of a hill of blood red clay?

America. Ferguson meets Alan in a cemetery in front of Daddy 
Cushing's grave. He rambles about it all working out for "the 
best" because Edith is happy. Right? Alan says he has no idea 
because he hasn't heard from her lately. Yeah. Friends of the 
opposite sex tend to just...stop talking once one of them gets 
married. Ferguson says HE'S heard from her...when she requested 
a transfer of whatever assets the patriarchal society of the 
time allows women to have to England. Which of course doesn't 
include the house they liquidated because women weren't allowed 
to own property. In fact, they are generally treated like 
irresponsible children when it comes to money, which is 
probably why Ferguson goes on to complain that she's sinking 
all her allowance into her husband's clay factory and he can't 
stop it. Alan, barely listening, interrupts to voice his 
growing suspicions regarding Mr. Cushing's death. He barely 
begins the part about finding the pay stub when Ferguson cuts 
in to tell him about the P.I. Daddy hired not long before he 
died and ISN'T THAT SUSPICIOUS? Alan does the staring 
thoughtfully into the distance thing again.

Night in England. Edith is dreaming about the blood red 
creature that was once a woman standing in the distance 
pointing at the house and shrieking. She wakes up coughing 
blood. Thomas is again absent and there are weird noises coming 
from upstairs including what sounds like ghostly children's 
laughter. Edith grabs the candlestick and stands in the middle 
of the room to confront the ghost, asking it to give her a sign 
if it's really there. She waits a couple seconds, then decides 
she needs to be more specific, holding out her arm and asking 
it to touch her hand. A shadowy figure moves in the background 
and it would have easily been missed if it wasn't for the 
dissonant chord shrieking across the soundtrack. She waits for 
a few more beats and then suddenly her arm is dragged down 
violently and she crashes into the floor. A woman screams 
somewhere in the distance, cut off by a sickening crunching 
noise.
   Chrissy: She was eaten by a werewolf.
   Diandra: Still sticking to the vampire thing, huh?
   Chrissy: I see no reason not to.
The creepy ghost children laugh again.

Edith gets up and walks slowly into the bathroom, where all the 
human noises have stopped, replaced by the sound of slowly 
dripping water. The red ghost lady is laying in the bathtub, a 
meat cleaver sticking from her head. Blood floats from the 
wound in wisps like smoke. And then she twitches, groans and 
starts climbing from the tub. Edith rockets backward and starts 
yelling for Thomas. "Leave. Now," ghost lady hisses. She 
reappears in front of Edith and calls her by name. "His blood 
will be on your hands," she wails. Edith runs to meet Thomas, 
coming down the stairs fully dressed despite it being the 
middle of the night and trailed by Lucille, who is also fully 
dressed. Edith babbles about a woman in the corridor over 
there. Of course Thomas sees nothing and thinks she's 
hysterical.

So Lucille is pouring her a cup of tea while Edith sits by the 
fireplace, whimpering the whole story to Thomas. "There was 
such hatred in her eyes," she cries. "She knows who I am and 
she wants me to leave." Lucille scoffs that she's not going 
anywhere and it was just a bad dream. Edith whimpers that 
she'll go mad if she stays. Thomas tries to calm her, offering 
to take her somewhere tomorrow like...er...the post office. 
Edith is like 'if by post office you mean train station because 
I NEED TO LEAVE THIS CREEPY HAUNTED MANSION WITH THE GHOST THAT 
WANTS ME DEAD.' Lucille pushes a cup of tea into her hands, 
cups her face and shushes her, saying "this is your home now. 
You have nowhere else to go."
   Chrissy: Yeah, that phrasing isn't the least bit 
   disturbing.
Thomas looks vaguely alarmed, but doesn't say anything. 

Sometime after they put Edith back in bed, Lucille hisses at 
Thomas that she's up to something because "how could she know 
about mother?" Wait...that was mommy dearest with the meat 
cleaver in her head? Thomas swears he didn't tell her anything 
and he doesn't know WHAT is going on, but Edith is clearly 
upset. He offers to take her to the depot tomorrow when he 
picks up his machine parts. Lucille says fine, but she wants 
this whole thing over with once she "signs the final papers".

Morning. Thomas and Edith arrive at the warehouse where the 
post office stores all the large packages. He gushes over a 
valve he had specially made in Glasgow that could "make all the 
difference" and they might be able to reopen the mines. A man 
pipes up that she must be Lady Sharpe and offers to give her 
some letters that have been collecting for her. As she's 
signing for them, he babbles that two are certified from her 
lawyer and one comes from Milan. She blurts that she doesn't 
know anybody in Italy. The guy just shrugs and says apparently 
she does now.  Thomas wanders back over to tell her they should 
leave before the storm picks up and they can't make it back to 
the house. One of the workers overhears and offers to let them 
stay in a room upstairs if they need to.
   Chrissy: It's very small. There's only the one bed. 
    Shouldn't be a problem for you.
   Diandra: I'm not sure that trope works on an already 
    married couple.

America. Alan gets the address for Thomas and Lucille in 
England from the hotel owner who apparently still has to 
forward mail for them. He runs into Mr. Holly in the lobby. Mr. 
Holly pats the seat next to him like maybe he 
offers...ahem...services other than investigative.
   Chrissy; Ew, no! Don't make me picture Owen like that!
Alan sits beside him and asks if he brought a copy of the 
"information". Holly hands him a folder and says it took him a 
while to get that newspaper clipping on top. Alan unfolds it 
and we focus on the headline "SHOCKING SAVAGE MURDER AT 
ALLERDALE HALL (FEAR GRIPS RESIDENTS FOLLOWING GHASTLY 
DISCOVERY OF LADY BEATRICE ALEXANDRA SHARPE SLAIN IN BATH)". 
Yep, it was mommy dearest. Holly babbles that the only thing he 
was able to give Mr. Cushing was the civil documents, but that 
was "enough to impede any further relationship between Sir 
Thomas and Miss Cushing." Because, he points out, according to 
one of the other papers in the file, Thomas is already married.

England. Thomas is reading Edith's story again in the room 
above the post office. He asks if her dark hero - who he really 
likes - is going to make it to the end of the story. She says 
that's entirely up to him.
   Chrissy: Obvious analogy is obvious.
   Diandra: You know, I think I just realized why I have 
    had the nagging feeling that Henry has to die in my 
    fic. He IS the tragic, romantic hero.
   Chrissy: You're...you're going to kill Tom Hiddleston's 
    character?
   Diandra: No, I just have the nagging feeling I SHOULD 
    because he is such a tragic romantic hero. At least in 
    his mind. 
   Chrissy: ...............
   Diandra: So is insisting we do this recap so you could 
    possibly get spoilers for my fic paying off yet?
Thomas asks what she means by that. She explains how characters 
talk to their writers and determine the course of the story 
through their choices, which the writer doesn't necessarily 
have control over.
   Chrissy: And sometimes they harass the writer until the 
    writer finally gives in and writes the story just to 
    make them shut up.
   Diandra: Hey, don't be quoting me. 

Thomas seems to have a moment of profound thought at the idea 
of characters having choices about who they become throughout 
the story. Then he sits on the bed, apologizing for the dismal 
accommodations, but noting that at least it's warm. She happily 
says she actually likes it better. Well, duh. It's warm, it 
isn't falling apart and it doesn't have an angry ghost crawling 
around. She flops beside him and asks why they can't just leave 
it. Thomas says it's all they have. She notes that she left 
everything she used to be when she ran away to England with 
him. She says they could live anywhere in the world. 
London...Paris........ Milan. He smiles and entertains her 
fantasy until that last one when he just stares at her 
suspiciously. She feigns ignorance and asks if he's ever been 
to Italy. He looks into the distance and says yes...once...
   Chrissy: I met this guy who claimed to be four hundred 
    years old...
   Diandra: Oh, goody, the "How to Stop Time" crossover 
    wank is back. I was beginning to think you had 
    forgotten about it.
She says he's always looking to the past and "you won't find me 
there."

And thus begins the scene that will test our ability to get 
through this recap. I'm pretty sure we have never done a scene 
like this together and I'm not really used to writing this sort 
of thing in QUITE this way, so...this should be interesting.

Thomas pins her to the bed and they make out for a while to 
soft, romantic music playing across the soundtrack. They stop 
long enough for her to remove his shirt and Chrissy's eyes are 
already taking on a glassy look.
   Chrissy: Hmm? Did you say something?
   Diandra: Nope, you're fine.

She hikes up her skirt and he wiggles down between her legs and 
starts performing what seems to be a signature move of Tom's - 
smashing his face into the inside of a woman's thigh like he's 
trying to sink his teeth as deep into the muscle as he can.
   Chrissy: [grumbles something that sounds like "he can 
   eat me anytime"]
He stops halfway up her thigh and crawls back to kiss her while 
she takes down his pants. I remember seeing something somewhere 
about the deliberate suggestion Tom made here to subvert the 
usual standard of the woman being half naked during a love 
scene while the man barely has to show anything. If somebody 
was going to have to show skin, he figured it should be him. 
This is one of the reasons I love him. Right, Chris? Chrissy? 
Okay, I'll just keep talking then.

She rolls him over and he hangs on to the headboard while they 
thrust against each other and we fade out. I pause the video 
and wait for Chrissy to become responsive again.
   Chrissy: Were you actually GIGGLING just now? How are 
    you so unaffected by that?
   Diandra: I guess I've seen this scene gif'd so many 
    times on Tumblr that it's lost any power it might have 
    had over me. But I'm laughing because before this scene 
    started I sent a text to Emilio that said where we were 
    in the movie and ended with the words "send help" and a 
    few minutes later he sent me a gif of Deadpool making 
    crude gestures at Colossus. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, maybe it's a good thing we didn't invite 
    him. He wouldn't help get us back on track so much as 
    he would sit back and laugh at us.
   Diandra: Oh, yeah. He totally enjoys watching people 
    drool over crushes. 

So we're back at the haunted mansion the next day and Edith 
kisses Thomas after he helps her down from the carriage and 
then skips into the house she was so determined to escape from 
with a smirk.
   Chrissy: Well, if that's all it took to calm you down...
Thomas gets Finlay to help him unload the machine parts while 
Edith goes to find Lucille and tell her they're back. She finds 
a pan left simmering on the stove and moves it from the hot 
burner. Lucille comes around the corner and Edith says her 
breakfast was burning. Lucille ignores it and starts tending 
the fire in the stove while grilling Edith about where they 
were and why they didn't come home last night. Edith says they 
spent the night at the depot and Lucille goes very still. "You 
slept there?" Edith is like 'er...yeah, there was some sleeping 
involved. We are married, you know. Weren't we talking about 
this before?' Lucille lunges at her, banging the pan full of 
burned breakfast down on the table beside her and shrieking "is 
this all a game to you? I was frantic!" Edith is like 
'........what the hell?' Lucille gets quiet as she babbles 
about being all alone and worrying about them out in the storm 
while she scrapes what looks like eggs back into the pan with 
her bare hands. She picks up the letters Edith left on the 
table and asks if they're from America. 

Edith, looking shaken from that outburst, mutters that she 
doesn't feel well and Lucille automatically turns to make her 
tea. While she has her back turned, Edith pulls one of the keys 
from the ring she left unattended - a key labeled "Enola". 
Luckily, any noise she makes is covered by a sudden gust of 
wind outside and accompanying creaking of the house. Lucille 
mutters that the more the house sinks, the worse that gets. 
Edith is like 'uh-huh...I'm just going to take my letters and 
run if it's all the same to you.'

Upstairs, she opens the first letter from Ferguson that informs 
her that the first transfer of Daddy's estate is finished, but 
she needs to sign the enclosed document for the rest of it. She 
goes to sign it with the pen daddy gave her and hesitates, 
eyeing the letter from Milan. She opens it to find a letter 
written in Italian, addressed to "my dear Enola", which she 
recognizes from the key and the trunk in the basement.

So she rushes down to the basement and uses the key to open the 
trunk. "A gramophone player," she gasps for the benefit of the 
audience members who don't recognize that any more than they 
did the wax cylinders it plays earlier. She pulls it out along 
with three envelopes labeled "Milan", "Edinburg" and "London". 
Daddy Cushing notes in voice over callback that these are the 
cities Thomas visited when he was trying to get funding for his 
project. As she's straining to put two and two together, the 
lock on one of the vat covers starts rattling. She goes to 
check it, then finds something heavy to break the lock. She 
sticks a pipe into the pool of thick red soup inside, swishes 
it around a little and then just sets the pipe on the edge of 
the vat and walks away. The camera pans closer as a skeleton 
floats slowly to the surface.

Outside, Lucille finds Thomas working on his machine, which he 
gushes has been working "perfectly" for a whole hour so far. He 
hugs her and she stiffens. Oblivious, he keeps rambling about 
how they've done it and he can't wait for Edith to see it 
working. "Edith," Lucille asks testily. "I did this with you." 
Thomas says yeah, of course, um...we need more coal. Is that 
okay? She starts stomping off and Thomas reminds her that 
Finlay can get it if she just gives him the key. Lucille 
freezes, staring at the keys in her hand as she realizes one is 
missing.

So Edith is coming back up to the main level when Lucille calls 
her name. She scampers to her room and hides the envelopes she 
got from the trunk under a chair before Lucille can find her, 
then sits in it and pulls a blanket over her lap to hide the 
red clay stain on the hem of her dress. Lucille finds her 
slumped this way, massaging her forehead. Lucille apologizes 
for her behavior this morning in the kitchen. It's just that 
she was SO CONCERNED... she trails off as she notes that Edith 
didn't drink the tea she made. Edith says she doesn't feel well 
and asks if she can have some cold water instead. Lucille 
pointedly leaves the key ring on the tea tray and goes to fetch 
that from the sink in the bathroom. Edith - no doubt thinking 
this is a great stroke of luck - scrambles to return the Enola 
key to the ring. "Have you had a chance to read your letters," 
Lucille calls. Edith says yes, it's just papers she needs to 
sign. Nothing interesting. She is back in the chair by the time 
Lucille returns and accepts the glass, blinking in confusion as 
Lucille strokes her forehead and assures her she'll feel better 
soon. Lucille picks up the keys and walks away, noting that the 
Enola key is back when she's in the hallway. 

Night. Edith goes to retrieve the gramophone and wax cylinders, 
setting them up in the library. A voice on the first cylinder 
identifies itself as Pamela Upton, which Edith matches to the 
name on the London folder, which is accompanied by the date 
1887. Pamela says she is testing the recording device she 
bought for her "beloved" Thomas Sharpe. She prompts Thomas to 
say something and they argue about what he should say while 
Edith pulls pictures out of the envelope - presumably of 
Pamela. In one, she is sitting in a wheelchair. It's hard to 
tell, but we can probably assume it's the one the camera was 
lingering on earlier. Edith moves right to the folder for 
Margaret McDermott, Edinburg, 1893. It is also full of pictures 
of a woman - with Thomas in at least one of them. The 
gramophone runs out of steam as Thomas' voice is reciting a 
nursery rhyme, warping it creepily just as Edith finds a land 
transfer certificate with Margaret's name on it. 
   Chrissy: The nursery rhyme about a little boy throwing a 
    cat down a well wasn't creepy before it started 
    warping?
   Diandra: Yeah, well...most nursery rhymes are really 
    pretty creepy.

Edith purses her lips and moves on to the next recording, 
picking up the third envelope marked Enola Sciotti, Milan, 
1896. "I wish I had the strength to leave," Enola moans on the 
recording. "But I can't. All they want is my money to work on 
that infernal machine of his. That's all they care about." 
Edith finds a picture of Enola and Thomas sitting at a table 
and focuses on the familiar tea set as Enola breaks into a fit 
of coughing. Enola recovers and vows to hide the cylinders in 
the linen closet so if anyone finds them they will know "they 
did this." Edith finds a picture of Enola holding the dog in 
her lap, the dog's beloved ball in one hand. The next picture 
is of possibly the same woman, holding a baby. Edith blinks at 
it while Enola says she has to stop the recording because she 
can hear them coming. The next picture is just of the baby and 
it appears to be dead. Enola repeats that they are KILLING her 
and the poison is IN THE TEA. In case we're still not getting 
this, Edith coughs into her hand and spits up blood again. She 
runs away from the player as Enola begs whoever finds the 
recording to locate her body and bring it home for burial. 
Edith keeps running all the way out the front door, where a 
blast of cold air whips her nightgown around her. She stands in 
the enormous snow drifts for a few seconds, coughs and goes 
back inside, collapsing at the foot of the stairs.

In the morning, she wakes up back in bed with Lucille hovering 
nearby, holding the tea tray. Lucille says they found her at 
the foot of the stairs and asks dully if she's feeling better 
now. Edith moans that she needs to go into town and see a 
doctor. Lucille says yes, but for now they're snowed in. She 
tries to hand Edith a cup of tea and Edith pushes it away. 
Lucille shrugs and offers her some porridge instead, saying she 
must regain her strength. Edith gives in and lets Lucille feed 
her, miserably choking mouthfuls down and wincing as Lucille 
drags the spoon loudly against the lip of the bowl every time. 
Lucille muses that she tended to their mother in this same bed. 
And she was bedridden many times. Oh, did Thomas ever tell her 
their father abused their mother? He broke her leg once and it 
never really healed right.
   Chrissy: Ahem. So are you getting THIS from this movie 
    too?
   Diandra: No, uh...that came more recently and I forgot 
    about this part.
Lucille concludes that she made her mother better and vows to 
do the same with Edith. Note to self: research when Munchausen 
by Proxy was first diagnosed [ETA: 1951, but Munchausen was a 
hypochondriac baron from the late 1700s].

Lucille puts down the porridge and tries to get Edith to drink 
the tea again. Edith refuses again. Before Lucille can force 
the issue, Thomas shows up and asks if he can be left alone 
with his wife. Lucille leans over Edith and whispers that she 
will be out of bed very soon.
   Chrissy: We'll need to clean it up and change the sheets 
   for the next victim. 
Thomas pushes the wheelchair into the room as Lucille flounces 
off. He takes the teacup Lucille apparently pressed into her 
hands from Edith and says "don't drink that........ever." So 
you've changed your mind about the plan then?

Thomas brings the tea tray down to the room where Lucille is 
playing the piano. He tells her Edith is very sick. Possibly 
dying. Lucille is like 'duh, brother dear, that's what happens 
when you feed someone poison.' Lucille adds that she obviously 
figured out the tea was poisoned, so she poisoned the porridge 
instead this time. Thomas snaps at her to stop this. They don't 
HAVE to do this. Lucille says yes they do. "You have no idea 
what they'd do. I would be taken from here. Locked away."
   Chrissy: Is there a downside to this on the horizon, 
   or...
She adds that they would hang him.
   Chrissy: There it is.
She says they need to stick together. She strokes his face and 
murmurs that he would never leave her. He clenches his teeth 
and says he CAN'T. They both cry and she kisses his cheek.

Night. A carriage pulls up to the depot and a man asks for 
directions to Allerdale. The guy who gave Edith her letters 
protests that the horse he rode in on is exhausted and he'll 
never make it there at this hour. The man - Alan - pulls the 
scarf down from his face and asks if he can hire another horse 
then. Depot owner says no, not in the winter. Alan asks if he 
can WALK there then. Depot owner is like 'you could try, but 
we'd probably just have to collect your frozen body in the 
morning.' Alan says he'll take his chances and orders the guy 
to meet him there after the storm is finished.

At the house, Edith finishes coughing blood into the sink and 
wheels the chair out into the hall. A noise that sounds very 
much like the wail of an injured animal comes from behind her, 
which the closed captioner describes for some reason as 
"purring".
   Chrissy: Some sort of cat noise. I don't know. I don't 
    own cats.
   Diandra: Clearly.
She follows the noise out into the main opening of the house, 
where it becomes more distinctly a crying baby.
   Chrissy: Correction: closed captioner is a man.
   Diandra: Or has just...never heard a baby in their life.
The blood red skeleton is hovering in mid-air, holding an 
equally blood red infant. Edith climbs from the chair and 
announces that she recognizes Enola now and asks what she wants 
from Edith. The skeleton glowers at her, eyes glowing evilly. 
Then she points at a room on the opposite side of the house.

Edith follows the direction and finds a little attic bedroom 
where Thomas and Lucille are making out heavily on the end of a 
bed. She stands there for a minute, looking revolted, while 
Thomas continues to suck a hickey into Lucille's bare shoulder 
and her hand continues to fumble around in his pants. When they 
realize she's there and look up, she staggers back out of the 
room and runs to the elevator. Lucille catches up to her there 
and says hey, at least they don't have to pretend anymore. She 
pushes Edith up against the banister in the hall, overlooking 
the gaping center of the house. Thomas runs out on the opposite 
side, yelling at Lucille to stop and telling her someone is at 
the door. Edith, grappling with Lucille, sobs that she KNEW 
they weren't really siblings. Lucille says oh, yes, they are, 
rips the ring off her finger and shoves her over the banister 
while Thomas screams. Edith hits a banister on a lower floor on 
the way down and lands in the pile of snow in the middle of the 
entry. She stops moving, but she's obviously still breathing. 
Someone bangs on the door. And then we just fade out on a shot 
of Edith lying in the snow.

She wakes up in the chair by the fire with Alan bandaging her 
foot. He greets her and warns her not to talk or move yet 
because she's heavily sedated. He keeps rambling about how he 
needed to set her leg, but she'll be fine while Edith's eyes 
wander behind him to where Thomas and Lucille are standing, 
looking like children awaiting a scolding. Alan turns to them 
and - because he apparently hasn't said a word to them since he 
arrived - begs their forgiveness for him dropping in so late 
and unannounced. Lucille is like 'oh, no, we're just lucky you 
were here when Edith just fell over the banister because THAT'S 
WHAT HAPPENED. She's very clumsy.'
   Chrissy: Gets it from her dad.
   Diandra: Nice callback.
Lucille gushes that this really is lucky because she's been so 
ILL that she's starting to become delirious. Like, she's 
starting to have this crazy delusion their trying to kill her 
or something.

Edith ignores Lucille and starts rambling to Alan that her 
mother spoke to her: tried to warn her. Alan grabs a cup of tea 
and tries to get her to drink and she refuses very pointedly. 
Lucille grabs at Alan's arm and offers to let him stay with 
them until the storm passes. He looks down pointedly at the 
ring on her hand, which he last saw Edith wearing before she 
left America. Alan agrees to the arrangement, but shoos the 
siblings out so he can have some privacy with his patient. He 
waits until they are out the door, then bends over Edith and 
mutters that he came to take her from here.
   Chrissy: Because of course she would need a man to 
    rescue her.
   Diandra: Uh-huh. Well, as we've established before, 
    women were basically kept helpless and childlike at the 
    time. Couldn't own property. Couldn't vote. Were 
    treated like they were crazy if they said their 
    husbands were trying to kill them.
   Chrissy: Yeah. When did that change?
   Diandra: Did it?
   Chrissy: In England.
   Diandra: Oh. Um...slowly over the course of the last 
    century. 

Thomas follows Lucille into the kitchen, begging her to stop 
whatever she's thinking of doing. She mutters that somebody has 
to stop Alan and fishes a knife from the drawer, holding it out 
to Thomas handle first. "Is it going to be you this time," she 
asks.
   Chrissy: Ha. Well...
   Diandra: Yes, yes, foreshadowing. We get it.

Alan tries to get Edith to stand up, but she nearly collapses 
immediately. So he scoops her up and carries her toward the 
front door, the dog tagging along. He sets her down so he can 
locate her coat, but of course this is when Lucille and Thomas 
reappear. Alan babbles that Edith is exhausted and anemic and 
he really needs to get her to a hospital. Lucille mildly says 
that isn't necessary. Alan looks back and forth between the two 
of them for a beat and says uh...yeah, it is. You see, because, 
she has CLEARLY BEEN POISONED. 

The exposition fairy forces him to awkwardly hand Edith that 
article about their mother just then. He summarizes the 
gruesome scene of her death and says no suspect was ever 
arrested, but there was no one else in the house at the time. 
Alan concludes that nobody wanted to consider the obvious. "You 
did this," Edith hisses, glaring at Thomas in disgust. Alan 
says no, he was only twelve at the time and sent off to 
boarding school after being questioned by the police. Fourteen 
year old Lucille, though...
   Chrissy: Right, because a fourteen year old girl has the 
    upper arm strength to drive through a human skull with 
    a meat cleaver.
   Diandra: Eh. After years of watching "The Walking Dead" 
    I have concluded that film and television writers have 
    very little understanding of just how strong the human 
    skull is.
   Chrissy: It took several blows against a heavy, 
    immovable object to kill Daddy Cushing.
   Diandra: Yeah, well...I never said the writers were 
    consistent in their ignorance.

Anyway. According to the article, Lucille was sent to a convent 
in Switzerland, but Alan has his doubts it was actually a 
"convent". Lucille's face twitches. Alan scoops up Edith again 
and tells her that Thomas is already married to a Pamela Upton. 
Edith is like 'yeah, and two other women...I kind of figured 
that out already.'
   Chrissy: Okay, so that whole conversation about him 
    already being married and THAT was the reason he 
    couldn't marry Edith was bullshit then because I'm 
    pretty sure the law has ALWAYS been that you can 
    remarry when your previous spouse dies.
   Diandra: Yeah, but they probably never found the bodies, 
    so...
   Chrissy: So it's still stupid because I would think the 
    bigger concern here is that he KEEPS marrying women who 
    are never seen again. I know he married them in 
    different countries, but they seem to have all ended up 
    back at creepy death manor, England.
   Diandra: Weren't you just pointing out the 
    inconsistencies in the writing?

Alan starts walking Edith toward the door. Don't know how he 
was expecting this to work. As he passes Lucille, she swings 
the knife - hidden by the unnecessarily froofy layers of her 
nightie - under his arm. He staggers away, leaving Edith to 
stand awkwardly beside Lucille, and pulls the knife out, 
causing blood to spurt. Lucille shoves Edith into a nearby 
chair and hands the knife to Thomas, sneering that he should 
get his hands dirty for once. Thomas meets Alan at the door 
where he is stupidly staggering around and muttering Edith's 
name. The dog barks and Lucille grabs for him, snarling "little 
shit". The dog whimpers and goes quiet, but we don't see what 
she did. Or ever see him again.
   Diandra: So the answer to your question earlier is: yes, 
    the dog dies, but it is only suggested and not at all 
    explicit.
   Chrissy: Thought so.

Thomas takes Alan's hand and puts it on the knife, explaining 
that if he doesn't do this, Lucille will and begging Alan to 
help him. Because as a doctor, he should know where he can be 
stabbed without dying. Alan guides it to a spot on his abdomen 
and grunts as Thomas stabs him. Edith cries and shrieks that 
they are both MONSTERS. Lucille sing-songs that those were 
mother's last words too.

So then somehow, Thomas gets Alan away from the women and takes 
him down to the basement to hide. He exposits for the benefit 
of the audience that Lucille is getting Edith to sign the 
papers she somehow still hasn't managed to sign. Except once 
she does that, she's dead. He promises to find a way to stop it 
and bring Edith back down here. Then he directs Alan to go 
through the mineshaft to get out. Alan is like 'yeah, okay, 
shut up and GET ON WITH IT BEFORE I BLEED OUT HERE.'

Upstairs, Lucille is burning Edith's manuscript, chuckling as 
she reads bits of it and muttering "you thought you were a 
writer."
   Chrissy: Everyone's a critic.
She looks at Edith sitting over at her desk with the papers and 
asks what the hell she's waiting for as she has nothing left to 
live for. All the women they snared were the same. They were 
all sad and pathetic and wealthy and didn't have any relatives 
to come snooping around. She considers what they are doing 
"mercy killings". Edith points out that the Italian woman had a 
baby and they killed it too. Lucille sneers that it wasn't HER 
baby. None of the women actually had sex with Thomas. The baby 
was Lucille's. It was "born wrong." Uh...yeah. We've known what 
incest can do to offspring for millennia. She snips a lock of 
Edith's hair and braids it as she rambles about how they 
probably should have let the baby die, but Enola thought she 
could save it.

Edith gets back to the point: what was all this "horror" for, 
exactly? Money? The mansion? The mines? Their title? Lucille 
says the marriages were for money, "the horror was for love. 
The things we do for a love like this are ugly, mad, full of 
sweat and regret. This love burns you, maims you and twists you 
inside out. It is a monstrous love. And it makes monsters of us 
all." She keeps rambling about how Thomas was perfect when he 
was a child, so she protected him from mother's beatings 
whenever he did something wrong. She puts the lock of Edith's 
hair in a drawer with four others of varying colors. I guess we 
can assume these are her trophies and the first one in the row 
is white because it is mommy dearest's.
   Chrissy: So basically this is a Victorian England 
    version of an episode of "Criminal Minds".
   Diandra: Probably over simplified, but yes. I'm sure 
    there's a clinical term for her specific type of 
    psychopathy, but at the time it was probably just 
    explained away as being a crazy female. 

She finishes that the only love she and Thomas ever knew came 
from each other. Edith finally pipes up that that's not really 
true and Thomas would be perfectly capable of loving someone 
else if she would LET HIM. Lucille bares her teeth and yells at 
Edith to SIGN THE PAPER DAMNIT. Edith glares and slowly signs 
before finally asking who killed her father.
   Chrissy: Miss Marple, she is not.
Lucille smirks and rambles about what a condescending asshole 
Daddy Cushing was and how pathetic he looked when she was 
smashing his face into the sink. Edith lunges at her and stabs 
the tip of her fountain pen into Lucille's chest. This causes 
almost as much blood to spurt as the actual knife did earlier 
when Lucille stabbed Alan.
   Chrissy: It's almost starting to look like a Quentin 
    Tarantino movie.
   Diandra: No, that would require a LOT more blood. And 
    swearing.
   Chrissy; Hey, I said "almost".

Edith runs while Lucille is stumbling around. She ends up at 
the elevator just as Thomas arrives and waves her "weapon" at 
him, her hand and the pen covered in blood. Except instead of 
just doing...literally anything useful...she shrieks 
incoherently at him to stay away from her until he grabs her by 
the wrists and calmly explains that Alan is still alive. 

Apparently, there was a whole flowery speech here in the 
original script, but Tom and Mia reduced it down to the 
following lines.
   Edith: You lied to me!
   Thomas: I did. 
   Edith: You poisoned me!
   Thomas: I did.
   Edith: [starting to cry] You told me you love me.
   Thomas: I do. [also starting to cry]
   Chrissy: There's a fine line between writing a great, 
    prosaic work of literature and being effective in 
    telling the story and getting the point across.
   Diandra: The difference between Proust and Stephen King.
   Chrissy: There's a comparison I never thought I'd see 
    someone make. Although Stephen King has a tendency to 
    ramble and write on and on and on and on and ON like he 
    has no idea how to END his stories.
   Diandra: Yeah, that's why I didn't question the 
    algorithm I plugged my own writing into that told me I 
    write like Stephen King.
   Chrissy: ................what the fuck kind of writing 
    did you use?

He begs her to trust him right now and lets go, holding his 
hands up defensively as he says she can leave or she can wait 
for him while he goes to get those papers back. It's up to her. 
"I'm going to finish this," he promises. And then he marches 
into the room Edith left Lucille in, picks up the papers from 
where they have scattered on the floor in the scuffle and just 
tosses them into the furnace in the wall. 

Lucille staggers upright from where she was sitting in a 
chair...I don't know, woozy from the absurd amount of blood 
loss? He turns toward her and says Lucille will not touch Edith 
anymore. She sneers that he thinks he can order her around now. 
He begs her to leave this rotting hell hole with him, saying 
they can start a new life somewhere else. She snorts and asks 
WHERE. He says it doesn't matter, the POINT is that they can 
leave. Just let the mines swallow the house and whatever 
remains of their family legacy. "We would be free. We can all 
be together." He seems to be getting through to her until the 
word "all". She asks if he actually loves victim number four.
   Chrissy: Five.
   Diandra: If you count mommy, who was killed under 
    completely different circumstances and far more 
    violently.
   Chrissy: Yeah, come to think of it...that white lock of  
    hair didn't have any blood on it. Did she wash it or 
    did she manage to find a patch of clean hair in the 
    bloody mess that was her cleaved head?
   Diandra: This is the detail your focusing on right now?
   Chrissy: Well, you're the one who reminded me that she 
    managed to go from violent homicide requiring 
    superhuman strength to the more passive death by poison 
    tea.

"This day had to come," Thomas says cryptically. "We've been 
dead for years, Lucille." 
   Chrissy: No, it's too late to bring up the vampire thing 
   again.
Lucille, not listening, just asks if he loves HER more now and 
he PROMISED HE WOULDN'T LOVE ANYONE ELSE MORE. He just says 
yes, but, you know...life happens. Lucille just numbly stabs 
him in the chest with the knife she was originally going to use 
on Edith. He staggers and grunts and she stabs him again, 
crying. He gurgles her name and she reacts by stabbing him in 
the face because - as we noted earlier - Guillermo Del Toro has 
a very specific thing for mutilating the faces of his 
characters. She staggers away and he falls into a chair, 
gruesomely pulling the knife out. 
   Chrissy: It seems like there's a progression with 
    Guillermo. The guy getting shot in the face in "Pan's 
    Labyrinth" happened fast and by the time you even 
    registered it it was basically over. This was similar, 
    but WAY worse and more drawn out. "Shape of Water" had 
    a whole scene with a guy talking out of the holes blown 
    through his face, repeated gross amputation and a cat 
    getting its head bitten off. I am seriously terrified 
    of what he might do next.
   Diandra: I think that's probably a sentiment we can all 
    agree on.

Lucille squats beside Thomas as he slumps back and blood comes 
out of the eye above the wound, making it look like he's 
literally crying blood. He goes still and she wails and drags 
his body off the chair and into her lap.
   Chrissy: Things you regret, huh?
   Diandra: Foreshadowing!

Outside, Edith staggers back toward the noises, stopping when 
Lucille comes around the corner clutching the bloody knife. 
Lucille runs at her, screaming incoherently and Edith manages 
to escape into the elevator. Lucille runs down the stairs, 
still wailing. Edith arrives in the kitchen and upends the 
knife drawer, grabbing the biggest one she can find and 
scampering back to the elevator as Lucille catches up, slamming 
the gate closed. Lucille tries to stab Edith through the grate, 
trying to wrestle it open. Edith ducks her clumsy swings and 
slices at her hand on the gate.
   Chrissy: Ah, so Guillermo was just discovering the new 
    kink that would be explored further in his next movie.
   Diandra: The killing the pet thing started here too 
    right? I don't remember that in "Labyrinth".
   Chrissy: "Pan's Labyrinth". "Labyrinth" is...a whole 
    other thing. No, that's either another thing he decided 
    to push further in his next movie or he's just a dog 
    person and he didn't have the same compunctions about 
    letting the swamp creature from the black lagoon eat a 
    cat.

Edith fails to duck fast enough and gets a swipe to the cheek. 
She gives up her current strategy in favor of slamming the gate 
open on Lucille's knife hand repeatedly until she drops it and 
staggers back. Edith gets the elevator going again and this 
time goes all the way to the basement, finding Alan. She then 
applies a similar weird sequence of behavior he did earlier, 
suggesting that the script is not at all clear how these scenes 
are supposed to be blocked. She puts down the knife, helps him 
stand up, then tells him the crazy lady is right behind her and 
she has to go, but she will get help and get them out of here. 
She lowers him back down and hides with him as Lucille comes 
down the stairs/ramp. 

Lucille looks at the empty but clearly not actually empty room, 
chuckles a little and bends to remove a tile from the floor, 
loudly announcing that she hid away a little souvenir from 
mother before they sent her away to the "convent". She pulls 
out the swaddled, rusted cleaver, covered in dust. Edith 
retrieves her knife and - obviously being entirely in the open 
now - stands to face Lucille. Lucille makes lunging motions 
toward her from, like, fifty feet away and Edith flinches, then 
turns and runs up the opening in the ground right underneath a 
clay harvester. She looks at the sea of blood red snow dotted 
with machines and darts behind one as Lucille comes above 
ground. They play cat and mouse for a while, with Lucille 
darting around ghost-like and occasionally swiping at her 
before darting away again.

One of the machines starts running, making the slow puffing 
noise. And then Lucille lunges out of the fog. Edith grabs the 
arm swinging the meat cleaver and Lucille grabs the arm 
thrusting the knife. They stare at each other, stalemated. And 
then Lucille grabs the knife by the blade, slicing into her 
hand as she takes the knife from Edith and knicks her other arm 
with the cleaver. Edith grabs the first thing she can find - a 
shovel - and uses it as a sort of clumsy shield. "I won't stop 
until you kill me," Lucille growls. "Or I kill you."
   Chrissy: Oh, well, why didn't you just say so?

Edith glances in the general direction of the sky and mutters 
"help me". Lucille whangs her shield and hisses that nobody is 
around to help her. Edith says yes, there is and he's standing 
right behind her. Either believing her or not thinking she is 
smart enough to be using this kind of distraction tactic, 
Lucille turns around. Thomas' ghost - white haired and even 
paler than normal - is standing by one of the machines, ribbons 
of blood floating from his face wound.
   Chrissy: So I guess ghosts are like zombies in that the 
    longer they are dead, the worse they look. 
   Diandra: Or they just...need him to be more recognizable 
    for story purposes.
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's probably more likely.

Lucille cries and whimpers his name. And then Edith decides to 
use it as a distraction after all and whacks her with the 
shovel, sending her to the ground. Lucille staggers onto her 
knees, repeating the line about not stopping until one of them 
kills the other. Edith whacks her over the head, blood sprays 
and she faceplants into the ground. "I heard you the first 
time," Edith mutters.
   Chrissy: Not as anticlimactic as that last "Twilight" 
    movie, but...
   Diandra: You know, you keep trying to prevent me from 
    bringing those movies up, but YOU'RE THE ONE WHO KEEPS 
    BRINGING THOSE MOVIES UP.

Edith steps over Lucille's body and reaches to cup Thomas' 
cheek...sort of. He leans into her hand and the streaming blood 
seems to swirl around her fingers as she pulls away. And then 
he just crumbles and blows away and yes, I am fully aware that 
this is not the last time I will use that exact line in a recap 
this year.
   Chrissy: Oh, are you planning on getting to "Infinity 
    War" within the year? Because at this rate, I have my 
    doubts.
   Diandra: I'm sorry, whose idea was it to put off 
    "Spider-Man" so we could do this?
   Chrissy: I thought it was Emilio's. 
   Diandra: Oh, right. There was something about avoiding 
    bringing up the Toby Maguire movies and his raging 
    crush on Kirsten Dunst.
   Chrissy: Okay, now I know what I am definitely bringing 
    up when we do that recap.

And we're back to the shot at the beginning of the movie of 
Edith standing in her nightgown staring at her blood covered 
hand while the machine puffs away in the background, this time 
with context. A tear spills down her face as her voice over 
repeats the statement that ghosts are real. And then we cut to 
her and Alan stumbling down the walk to the front gate of the 
mansion (and the depot worker who has come to retrieve them) as 
the voice over continues about how most ghosts are tied to 
certain places. "But there are others," she says as the camera 
pans back into the mansion to the fire just starting to die in 
the kitchen. "Others that hold on to an emotion. A drive. 
Loss...revenge...love." We pan to a ghostly Lucille playing the 
piano as Edith says those ghosts never go away.
   Chrissy: So does that mean Thomas is still around 
    somewhere or did that blowing into dust thing mean he 
    finished whatever unfinished business he may have had 
    and moved on?
   Diandra: Um...sure.
   Chrissy: So do you think you can get this typed up and 
    published by Halloween?
   Diandra: Not a chance.

   Chrissy: How about that fic? Are you doing this recap to 
    avoid your other writing? Because I have a whole bunch 
    of story ideas to kick start your muse if she's not 
    cooperating.
   Diandra: Let me guess, they all involve some combination 
    of characters played by Tom Hiddleston and Benedict 
    Cumberbatch.
   Chrissy: Well, Tom's characters and the one character 
    Benedict will supposedly play if he doesn't back out 
    like he did on this movie.
   Diandra: Wouldn't it be funny if Tom ended up taking 
    over that part too?
   Chrissy: Ha. I'm sure you're thinking that would ruin 
    all the "fanwanking" I've been doing, but I can point 
    to several dozen Tom/Loki fanfics that prove otherwise.
   Diandra: Several?
   Chrissy: Hey, I have to satisfy my craving for Tom 
    Hiddleston porn SOMEHOW while I'm waiting for your slow 
    ass to write another Loki/Strange story.
   Diandra: And on that note...you know the faster we do 
    Homecoming, the faster we can get to Ragnarok, right?
   Chrissy: Meh. While I'm sure it will be fun to recap, it 
    will also be annoying and full of rants about the lack 
    of continuity and morbid "humor".
   Diandra: I choose to focus on the potential for running 
    jokes about Loki fucking the Grandmaster and Thor 
    flirting with the Hulk.
   Chrissy: Well, when you put it that way...