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The Films of Guillermo del Toro Ranked

Del Toro’s heart beats louder when he allows himself to play, dreaming his own dreams and respecting his heroes enough to sully them.

Guillermo del Toro Ranked
Photo: Searchlight Pictures

A thin line exists in the films of Guillermo del Toro between exaltation and blasphemy and damnation and transcendence. Over the course of Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth, characters scurry to justify their wants with religious and political ideology, laundering their wills and longings through cultural precedent. Lost in these machinations is an elemental sense of morality, which the supernatural cathartically returns to the fore. This thin line is explicated by a villain in Cronos who likens Jesus to a mosquito, reasoning that both could walk on water, and so humankind was meant to harness the abilities of the insect. The differences between Christ, a savior, and a common parasite seem to be of no consequence, as they’re linked by this aging capitalist for their common wielding of power.

Del Toro’s empathy, like that of most horror-minded filmmakers, resides with his villains and monsters, as they’re figurative or literal generals like him, wranglers of a populace to serve a common task, as well as deviators from the idealism that, at times, shackles del Toro’s imagination. Goodness in del Toro’s films is more often an abstraction, an obliging texture within a grander palette, existing out of need for counterpoint. Despite the screen time accorded to them, the innocent children in The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth are endearing yet weirdly beside the point—pawns in del Toro’s formal chess set.

Del Toro is a moralist drawn to the platitudes of parable, especially throughout his Spanish-language trilogy. All three films liken true bravery to rebirth, which entails the quiet nurturers and closeted warriors on the sidelines of war to quietly tend to infrastructure while men burn the figurative house down in the name of something forgotten. The schematic can vary from the rhythmic to the repetitive in his work, chiefly in Pan’s Labyrinth, which finds del Toro’s powers as a formalist blossoming mightily at the expense of spontaneity and his puckish sense of humor. But even at their most baldly preachy, his films are charged by an unresolved tension, as del Toro is excited by the exertions of power that he decries. Chuck Bowen

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 9, 2013.


The Shape of Water

11. The Shape of Water (2017)

The Shape of Water has been made with a level of craftsmanship that should be the envy of most filmmakers, but the impudent, unruly streak that so often gives del Toro’s films their pulse has been airbrushed away. For all of this film’s impersonal gorgeousness, there isn’t a memorable image along the lines of the red soil from Crimson Peak or the shot of Federico Luppi’s Jesus Gris licking blood off a bathroom floor in Cronos. Del Toro’s sentimental side takes over in The Shape of Water, leaving the audience with a plot that fuses E.T. and Free Willy with a frustrated woman’s daydream of sexual salvation. For all its conceits, themes, and symbols, The Shape of Water fails to impart a sense that its antique tropes have been adopted for a purpose. People, smitten with the film’s banalities, will claim that it has “heart.” But del Toro’s heart beats louder when he allows himself to play, dreaming his own dreams and respecting his heroes enough to sully them. Bowen

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Pacific Rim

10. Pacific Rim (2013)

Pacific Rim’s highpoint, set in Hong Kong, is notable for its stunningly detailed visual effects and coherent montage, though it’s made truly special by the distinctly personal nature of Dr. Newton Geiszler’s (Charlie Day) ambition. It’s impossible not to see this geek—so in awe of and at home within the blinged-out black market operated by Ron Perlman’s colorful Hannibal Chau, a trader of kaiju parts—as a stand-in for del Toro, a connoisseur of all things creepy-crawly who will die, or at least travel to the ends of the Earth, to prove that his hermetic interests are crucial to our cultural survival. And while the filmmaker is mercifully uninterested in flag-waving and easy feminist commentary, he also shuns emotional intimacy throughout, and in the end doesn’t rise above the obligations of staging a film of this sort as a multi-level video game, a stylish but programmatic ride toward an inevitable final boss battle, replete with blustery one-liners, cartoony shows of masculinity, and, in an unexpectedly longing exchange between heroes, unearned romance. Ed Gonzalez


Mimic

9. Mimic (1997)

Mimic is a film that boldly involves itself with those things that del Toro is most interested in, namely the horrors, both imagined and very real, of childhood, subterranean action, disease, and the inevitable repercussions of good deeds done. Most of the action takes place is closed quarters and tunnels, strewn with filth and sticky bodily fluids, cobwebs and rotted wood, which works as counterweight to the blustery, hollow philosophical and biological diatribes that Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) and her professor friend (F. Murray Abraham) engage in to stress the parallels, plot points and dichotomies implicit in the film already. The structure is indebted to early monster movies, but whereas del Toro has grown into a master of warping, eschewing, and dismissing contrivances, Mimic leans heavy on plot and pays little more than lip service to the larger, more complex themes that the film touches on. Chris Cabin


Nightmare Alley

8. Nightmare Alley (2021)

A remake of Edmund Goulding’s searing 1947 film Nightmare Alley might have been a good fit for the del Toro of yore. In Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone, he displayed a knack for humanism laced with a casual ruthlessness, and a concern with how trickery and illusion both reflected and intensified personal longing. Over the years, though, del Toro has developed an addiction to tropes for their own sake and to honeyed, moneyed cinematography that reflects little more than the fastidiousness of its own craftspeople. This remake is less a living and breathing movie than a fossilized riff on the idea of a movie. Del Toro occasionally offers the simple pleasure, fading from contemporary cinema, of watching sensationally hot icons of the screen flirt and circle one another, while considering the prospect of fucking, but the film, in the end, is just a story of a woman screwing a man over out of boredom, a pastiche of a pastiche of a pastiche, with a few unconvincing acts of violence for spice. Bowen


Pan’s Labyrinth

7. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Del Toro’s films do not starve for creatures of baroque ingenuity, and Pan’s Labyrinth, the vividly aestheticized tale of a young girl’s (Ivana Baquero) journey through the gothic rabbit hole of her imagination, is cluttered with insects that morph into faeries, a faun who gatekeeps an unknown dimension, a large toad with a secret in its volatile tummy, and a merciless monster with eyes in the palms of its hands. Not knowing what to make of the film’s spectacular collision of glossy reality and gaudy fantasy, some critics have succumbed to ignorance—like Time’s Mary Corliss, who described Pan’s Labyrinth as “Lewis Carroll meets Luis Buñuel,” as if del Toro shares anything in common with Buñuel besides a Spanish tongue. Del Toro is smart, but he’s no theoretician, and though he takes aim at fascism, his vision is scarcely surreal. And while its prone to sensualist shocks, his aesthetic is so tidy and discreetly alluring that Buñuel might have called it bourgeois. Gonzalez

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Crimson Peak

6. Crimson Peak (2015)

Del Toro’s decision to explicitly underline the weaknesses of the bookish Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), his proxy in Crimson Peak, belatedly exposes prior stand-ins in his work as equally shortsighted, and in the process the director clarifies a crucial thematic through line of his filmography. In retrospect, his fantasies are the opposite of escapes from harsh reality: It’s the real world, with its war and discrimination, that intrudes on the imagination, which can conjure up impressively detailed creatures and settings, but often struggles to map the complexities of emotion and history. Del Toro’s films tend toward the mythological, which is to say they’re timeless, rooted in a deep, era-nonspecific past. When social and historical context finally breach his microcosm, they expose the rifts of immaturity and sadness of a child who knows it’s time to grow up, but cannot face adulthood. Jake Cole



Hellboy II: The Golden Army

5. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Adolescent pulp fantasia meets sentimental married life in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Chomping on his cigar and launching into battle with all the enthusiasm of a plumber digging around under the sink, Ron Perlman’s demonic good guy Hellboy is as appealing as lovable Sesame Street icon Oscar the Grouch. Though the film caters to the fanboy crowd that wants to see rock ‘em, sock ‘em monster fights, del Toro’s strength as a filmmaker is the same as Peter Jackson’s in The Lord of the Rings: an ability to create a legion of creatures and their fantasy worlds, then take the time to give these beasties a very specific look that defies CGI whitewashing. For better or worse, the plots resolve themselves with the bare minimum of complications. Del Toro overcompensates with busy camerawork and slapstick humor (Hellboy mutters, “Aw, crap,” before getting punched through a wall one too many times), but the tone is set from the very first scene that this is a pop-up children’s book with lively pictures and a wide, wonderful rogues’ gallery of imaginatively Lovecraftian creatures. Jeremiah Kipp


Cronos

4. Cronos (1993)

The ticking of multiple clocks overlapping with a series of loud gongs introduces del Toro’s debut feature, Cronos, as a forceful mechanism with a built-in timer for sudden bursts of disintegration. Layers of sound resonate over black, giving the yellow credits an eerily present yet menacing feel. The audible dynamism gives way to a familiar dose of historical reflection, with an omniscient voiceover telling of a famous 16th-century Spanish watchmaker/alchemist who dreamt of creating a device that could spring eternal life. After the man is found dead with a stake through his heart among a random building collapse hundreds of years later, it appears he succeeded as a vampire. With this prologue, del Toro introduces the transcendence of manmade supernatural desires, positioning the consequences of myth and legend in a modern-day setting. The tension between history, science, and religion becomes increasingly palpable throughout Cronos, forging ideas concerning mortality and erosion that will evolve in his later films like the Hellboy series and Pan’s Labyrinth. Glenn Heath Jr.


Hellboy

3. Hellboy (2004)

It’s easy to see what attracted del Toro to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic: its hopeful humanity. The little boys in the director’s allegorical spooker The Devil’s Backbone are gripped by an oppressive political regime just as Hellboy (a remarkable Ron Perlman) is born from the burning embers of another. Consider this paranormal detective an insurance policy against post-war angst. Not unlike the night crawlers from Blade II, evil in this action-packed extravaganza is something crazy, sexy, and cool. Del Toro understands the allure of evil, and he evokes its seductive pull in the way madman Grigori Rasputin’s minions move through his frame. In many ways, Hellboy is a companion piece to Blade II: In both films, del Toro likens the threat of an ancient evil to a pestilence born from a kind of cultural recklessness (the grooves on the floor of an ancient Maldavian temple are aesthetically intravenous, a vial of ancient powder is one character’s protective condom), and the director understands how this carelessness manifests itself in his “mixed” outsiders. Gonzalez

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Blade II

2. Blade II (2002)

With Blade II, del Toro allowed Blade, a black superman trying to save humanity from a vampire apocalypse, to transform into the king of all insects. Even when del Toro is under studio control, there’s no suppressing his spiritual, entomological freaky-deakyness. The director has become a tortured lover of myths; he’s the fallen Catholic easily enamored by the stained-glass worldview of fairy-tale empires at the brink of destruction. And in Blade II, signature del Toro obsessions are on fierce display: a monarch’s fear of aging, his incessant desire to suspend time, and his messianic opponent’s own conflicted sense of past and future. In the film, del Toro places less emphasis on the decadence of the vampire lifestyle than he does on the societal effects of its widening plague. Luke Goss’s Nomak asks in one scene: “Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?” What first seems like a cut-and-dry moral dilemma becomes an awesome, cautionary tale against cultural homogenization. Gonzalez


The Devil’s Backbone

1. The Devil’s Backbone (2002)

Many of del Toro’s early films tell stories of suspended time, often through the point of view of children. In Cronos, a young girl keeps life-giving insects inside her innocent-looking dolly while the “funny shoes” boy from Mimic prognosticates entomological death without losing a body part of his own. In The Devil’s Backbone, a bomb is dropped from the skies above an isolated Spanish orphanage, which leaves a boy bleeding to death in its mysterious, inexplosive wake. His corpse is then tied and shoved into the orphanage’s basement pool, and when a young boy, Carlos (Fernando Tielve), arrives at the ghostly facility some time later, he seemingly signals the arrival of Franco himself. A rich political allegory disguised as an art-house spooker, The Devil’s Backbone hauntingly ruminates on the decay of country whose living are so stuck in past as to seem like ghosts. But there’s hope in brotherhood, and in negotiating the ghostly Santi’s past and bandying together against the cruel Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), the film’s children ensure their survival and that of their homeland. Gonzalez

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