Starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain; directed by Guillermo del Toro; 118 minutes; R for bloody violence, some sexual content and brief strong language.

The most pressing threat in Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror “Crimson Peak” isn’t the ooze-filled cauldrons of dead souls in the basement of the old Victorian mansion, nor the plotting, black-clad sister (Jessica Chastain), who serves a bitterly poisonous tea.

It’s the ever-lurking possibility that, at any moment, the lush, ornate tapestry of Del Toro’s film might swallow its performers whole.

It would be a grand death.

“Crimson Peak” is so lovingly wrapped in the stylish trappings of the genre that it’s one of the few movies you could say is worth it purely for the wallpaper.

It opens with a flashback and a promise from Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) that “ghosts are real.” After the death of her mother, she (or at least a ghoulish ghostly of her) visits Edith with a frightful warning: “Beware of Crimson Peak.” It’s a message that curiously fails to impress.

The setting is turn-of-the-century Buffalo, N.Y., where Edith lives with her father Carter Cushing (an excellent Jim Beaver). She wants to be a novelist, but her manuscript (a ghost story) is condescendingly rejected, praised only for feminine “loops” of her penmanship. Advised to write a love story, she pleads that the ghosts are a metaphor for the past.

From England, Thomas Sharpe (the splendid Tom Hiddleston) comes to town with his mysterious sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), in search of a grant for a contraption of his invention to mine the red clay beneath their home. Cushing, an established businessman, quickly rejects Thomas, but Edith doesn’t.

The rich atmosphere of “Crimson Peak” never wanes, but the story does. Having summoned the gothic ghosts, Del Toro never fully unleashes them. The director’s dark fantasy masterpiece remains “Pan’s Labyrinth,” but his affection for gothic romance is infectious; he’s surely, hopefully destined to adapt Dickins.

Jake Coyle, The Associated Press

Mia Wasikowska stars in “Crimson Peak.” Courtesy Legendary Pictures.