Cronos

Year: 1993

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 94m

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Writer: Guillermo Del Toro

Starring: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook

 

 

 

  Centuries ago, a watchmaker/alchemist builds a small device, the Cronos, to give him extend his life. It worked until an accident in which his heart was pierced and the Cronos disappeared.

  Now Jesus, an antique dealer, receives an angelic statue. When bugs start to crawl from it, Jesus investigates it further and finds the Cronos hidden in it’s base. When he winds it up and it attaches itself to him, this old man suddenly doesn’t seem as old anymore. He and the Cronos are bound now, leaving Jesus suddenly feeling the urge to consume blood.

  Meanwhile Angel (Ron Perlman) is trying to find the device for his uncle who is dying. And Angel will stop at nothing to get it.

  Del Toro’s feature directorial debut introduces us to his imaginative and artistic style right from the start. I can’t think of many others who could have pulled this particular movie off with such grace. Although Jesus is a vampire, the condition is never forced upon us for the sake of it, even down to the final fight which, taking place on a rooftop in front of a giant lit sign (which in itself just took me back to the good old days of classical film making) didn’t suddenly tell us that Jesus could fly or had super strength…he always stayed ‘human’. This was a very imaginative approach to a plot line that I am not usually fond of (I am beginning to rediscover some decent vampire movies of late, but don’t think I’m ready yet for too many ‘vampire as hero’ scenarios yet) but I felt that everything in this movie from the characters and their interactions, the depth of the story and the way the whole movie just looked worked for me.

  Until now the only Del Toro movie I’d really seen was Mimic which I loved and Blade 2 which was good because it was…well Blade 2. After watching Cronos I understand the director’s sense of art a little more and so will no longer try to avoid his other movies like Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.

  In fact I’m looking forward to them now.

  Cronos is definitely a classic and is a movie to see.