«Beautiful Things Are Fragile»: Intertextual Connections and the (Re)Construction of Identity in Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015)

This chapter argues that the consciously intertextual nature of the 2015 film Crimson Peak did not only enable Guillermo del Toro to render a heartfelt homage to time-honoured classics in the gothic tradition; it also operates at a strategic level in the enactment of a multi-layered rite of passage operating at three levels. On the one hand, with regard to its leading