Review of Cronos (1993) by Masorad ( — 16 Aug 2009

Nowadays Guillermo del Toro is known for his exotic blending of horror and fantasy, as shown with the 'Hellboy' series and his own 'Pan's Labyrinth'. While del Toro's status as an 'artist' is perhaps deserved, and his loving care and attention to movies is admirable, he falls far short of being a genuinely brilliant film maker. Here, his debut feature 'Cronos' isolates everything good and bad about the eccentric Mexican.

On the plus side del Toro's economy of style is extraordinary, using his tiny budget to conjure a world of chilling creepiness and somehow making the locations even grimier and seedier. The special effects are fantastic, partiuclarly Luppi's vampire make up, and, as always, the attention to sound picks out ever sinister nuance and whisper.

The other great pleasure is Luppi himself, his bronzed, aged frame and earthy strength making him eternally enduring and tough, like a Latin Clint Eastwood. His performance is one of unassuming professionalism.

But overall this two elements are about the film's only real strengths. Like all his features, del Toro is inept at cinematic narrative, with sequences spliced into each other without proper introductions or conclusions; it's not deliberate to the story, it's just not ironed out properly. The story itself doesn't really go anywhere, feeling too short to sustain a canvas as epic as film, and since del Toro doesn't plum for spectacular effects the pulp nature of the story feels uncomfortably lurid. There seems to be no reason why actors switch from speaking Spanish to English, and Aurora's silence feels contrived and ponderous. Jesus' relationship with Mercedes is never explained fully (are they lovers? family?).

The biggest flaw, in any del Toro movie, is tone. 'Cronos' is, most of the time, a deft mix of creeping Gothic horror and blackly comedic farce, which is enjoyably fun, but then it's offset by the crunching violence. 'Pan's Labyrinth' especially has the same problem; del Toro seems uncomfortable with it, like he needs to include it to pander to the idiots in the audience. Either that or he prefers to show violence as unpleasantly as possible, which contrasts unfavourably with his gift of gentle fantasy-horror. Also, there's little justification why most of the violence is meted out. We can understand the vampiric nature of the Cronos Device, but the sadistic tendencies of Perlman's Angel and his withering uncle are just a strain too far.

Admittedly, del Toro does some interesting things with the vampire myth. There are nods to classic conventions, such as aversion to sunlight and sleeping in a coffin, and, towards the end, Jesus resembles traditional iconography of Spanish Dracula movies. But even her a bland and all too-literal story of Jesus Christ is traced over the film's story, bolstered by some genuinely horrific religious imagery.

All in all it's a disappointing muddle, full of terrific ideas but terrible execution, particularly since Guillermo Navarro's inky cinematography bathes everything in a near-opaque darkness. del Toro has become a much more sophisticated director over the years, but his hindrances are still showing 16 years after his debut suffered by them.