A week and a half ago a Variety piece indicated that next month’s Cannes Film Festival might turn out to be “mildly deflating” — i.e., lacking in triples and homers. The idea of flying all the way to France for an experience that will partly include Matthew McConaughey contemplating ritual suicide fills me with levels of dread that I’d rather not describe.

Then an idea hit me this morning. What if Guillermo del Toro‘s Crimson Peak (Universal, 10.16), which Stephen King and Joe Hill saw and praised three weeks ago, shows out of competition in Cannes? Del Toro’s “blood-soaked Age of Innocence, a gloriously sick waltz through Daphne Du Maurier territory” (as Hill called it) sounds to me like a triple and just what the doctor ordered to counter-balance those images of McConaughey trying to work up the guts to disembowel himself over a bowl of ramen.

An hour later my idea was dead meat. Crimson Peak will be heavily promoted at Cinemacon and ComicCon but won’t be completely done until late May. So despite the sure-to-be-perfect atmosphere and urgently needed counter-vibe of a Del Toro experience on the Cote d’Azur, Crimson will have to wait. I’m very sorry about that. Even more sorry than I am about sitting through Sea of Trees.