One colour that I am very particular about is obviously the red because all the reds in the movie, which are very very few, all lead to the same past, to the ghosts, to the crime and the passion and the secrets of Crimson Peak.
Red is a really brutal colour because its very voracious. Even the most subtle red burns and obliterates everything else. I was trying to make that red the past. To have that past seep through the floor, seep through the snow and reveal its true nature. Crime never stays hidden in classic romance.
I felt it was important for the ghost to be rather unique in appearance, and I chose to colour-code them in a way that has never been done before. The ghosts are buried in the clay, like the bog people in The Mummy, and I thought it would be interesting to treat them in the same colour as the clay under the house which is a bright crimson. The house is built over clay mines, and the clay is a bright red. They are visually coded and the only red in the entire movie. Everyone who has a bit of red has something to do with the ghosts. The rest of the movie does not have that colour at all.
– Guillermo Del Toro on the use of red in Crimson Peak
