By [ad_1]
Guillermo del Toro can be considered a modern horror master, directing classics from the Spanish-language Cronos to the Academy Award-winning film The Shape of Water. He’s an indelible influence on the genre, with enough Hollywood presence to help a new horror auteur earn notice from studios. Here’s a critical overview of his career, averaged by scores on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.
10) Blade 2 – Average Score: 55
Blade 2, the much anticipated follow-up to Marvel’s first successful foray into comic book films, didn’t cut it with critics. They agreed that del Toro’s signature style came through in the film’s aesthetic, with its fresh vampire designs and the welcome presence of longtime friend and collaborator Ron Perlman. However, the CGI-heavy action scenes and dense plot never came together well enough to satisfy. Reviewer David Germain put it best by aptly labelling the film anemic.
9) Mimic – Average Score:60
Guillermo del Toro’s first encounter with Hollywood left him unable to supervise the final cut for Mimic, and it shows. Miramax ultimately turned the film into a mixed result alleviated by the quiet release of the director’s cut in 2011. However, the original film was supported by a number of major critics, with Roger Ebert defending del Toro’s densely textured, well-constructed theme park ride. Others found the emotional heart that had carried his previous work missing.
8) Pacific Rim – Average Score: 69
Diehard fans still defend this blockbuster showcase of giant robots punching giant monsters in the face, making Pacific Rim review-proof to those who know what they want. Critically, there were detractors unimpressed with its noise and spectacle, with one reviewer feeling dragged through the middle act. Most appreciated the film’s joyous appreciation of its goofy-sincere Hong Kong roots and judged it well against decades of its peers. It’s good enough for that dedicated audience who stay loyal to the fandom despite a poor sequel that didn’t feature del Toro.
7) Crimson Peak – Average Score: 69
Disastrously marketed as a horror film instead of the subversive gothic romance del Toro designed, the critical response to Crimson Peak was equally confused. Though the average score is low, dragged down by the lack of spooky scares and disturbing some with its sexual taboos, reviewers who watched the film as it was intended lauded it with top marks. When acknowledged as a gothic romance and not a horror flick, it’s a sumptuous visual journey with gripping performances by Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. Reviewers found the Kubrick-style production design the star of the show, with each rewatch offering new details to find.
6) Hellboy – Average Score: 77
The unlikeliest of superhero movies, Hellboy, surprised critics with Ron Perlman at his most charismatic. Once again, the emotional core of the film’s strange and monstrous cast lifted the overall score from middling to admired, with critics going out of their way to applaud the imagination required to build Hellboy’s playful atmosphere and frightening Nazi villains. With backhanded but otherwise effusive admiration, one critic cheered Hellboy for its Wagnerian grandeur despite the shoddiness of its setting.
5) Hellboy 2 – Average Score: 82
It’s rare for a sequel to surpass the original, but the expansion of Hellboy’s mythos into the gilded underworld of the Elves earned lofty acclaim. The joy del Toro feels for his hidden worlds carried even the legendary Roger Ebert along, and where he went, audiences followed. Even critics who mentioned a sense of repetition or a thin plot found themselves giving the film a positive review. One reviewer seemed to fight to give the film a mediocre score, with an offhanded alcoholism joke about an otherwise well-liked scene between a lovelorn Abe Sapien and Hellboy.
4) Cronos – Average Score: 84
Guillermo del Toro’s first major release set the tone for the nascent director, highlighting not only his love of bugs and clockwork gadgets, but the comfort he finds in things others label as monstrous. Critics overall embraced this premiere outing, finding the story to tick along as smoothly as its central clockwork scarab. Its strong, emotional heart was also lauded. Only one critic dismissed the film as arthouse pretension, but time has long since proven Guillermo’s talents.
3) The Devil’s Backbone – Average Score: 85
This Spanish-language film would be later seen as the spiritual precursor to Pan’s Labyrinth, telling a languid ghost story about orphans trying to live a normal life against the backdrop of civil war. The film’s ghost is a literal one, though it’s not the only specter in these children’s lives. Critical acclaim highlights the film’s emotional poetry, going on to laud the believable evil coming at the hands of its human cast. A few reviewers found themselves bored by the film’s pacing, but it wasn’t enough to keep this film from the top of del Toro’s resume.
2) The Shape of Water – Average Score: 90
Taking home Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards, this romantic fantasy codified what critics knew for years. Guillermo del Toro’s love for the monsters that shaped his youth came through the clearest in this film, transforming beloved actor Doug Jones into a leading man like no other. Critics made special note of actress Sally Hawkins, whose mute janitor is transformed from an ignored, ignoble “other” into someone fighting for a fantasy most women are taught to believe is not for them. A couple reviewers scrabbled to critique the film on “political merits,” but in the end, these voices went ignored.
1) Pan’s Labyrinth – Average Score: 97
A tragic fairy tale set against the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, critics recognized Pan’s Labyrinth as the best del Toro film offered to date. It was easy for reviewers to call the tale a “transcendent work of art,” with many of them in astonishment that this was an original work, not based on any written fable or inspired by old-fashioned sources. The forested labyrinths and allegorical horrors of Ofelia’s war-wrecked life come straight from del Toro’s imagination. Despite sparse notice at the 79th Academy Awards, the film is a critical classic and simply not to be missed.
About The Author
[ad_2]
