Cronos

365 Films

Entry #144

Cronos (1993)

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

Sadly, we have come to the conclusion of our Guillermo Del Toro retrospective and oddly enough we end at the beginning of his career with his debut feature film, Cronos.  It's an odd and rather touching modern day Vampire tale (in which the word vampire is never uttered) that Del Toro himself has admitted he would probably do entirely differently had he the opportunity to direct it to today.  In a way, it's almost a perfect debut feature, the awkward passages are akin to watching a toddler learn to walk but all of the Del Toro signifiers are there for future film historians to discover.  Cronos is ostensibly about an antique dealer and his granddaughter discovering an ancient device called the Cronos which grants eternal life to whomever allows its claws to penetrate their skin.  The only catch is the oldman also adopt an insatiable thirst for human blood.  Meanwhile a dying businessman and his greedy thug of a nephew (ably played by Mr. Perlman) conspire to forcibly pry the device away from the Grandfather in order to prolong his own life.  The thematic obsessions with machinery and symbols, familiar relationships exposed and shattered (and possibly rebuilt) by the supernatural genre elements, and last but not least, the presence of Ron Perlman.  Mr. Del Toro also brings in a welcome dose of humanity to the proceedings by displaying genuine fear over the eventual decomposition of the human body.  It's hard to not watch this film and think of the AIDS epidemic which, at the time, was finally gaining worldwide notoriety for the swath of destruction it had been cutting for some time.  Cronos shows a young mind trying to figure out its place in the cinematic universe and that in and of itself places it head and shoulders above most comparable debut features.