Editorials
A ‘Cronos’ Retrospective: Guillermo del Toro’s Subversive Mexican Vampire Tale
Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors and I’m certainly not the only person in the world who thinks that.
Del Toro, a native from Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico, has developed a rock-solid reputation of being something of a huge nerd and an imaginative child in an adult’s body, having been interested in the macabre and other geeky things since his youth in a strict Catholic home. Hobbies would include drawing his own unique monsters and directing various short films on his Super 8 camera, one which is about a killer potato venturing into the outside world – only to get crushed by a car. They truly do start early, don’t they?
Though obviously not as refined as his professional work, Del Toro’s early home films still contained the wildly morbid, darkly humorous, and expansive creativity that has defined the man’s work in both films and shows. A child at heart despite the multiple traumatizing events that he has experienced, Del Toro finds the beauty in the world of fantasy fiction and otherworldly beings with strong connections to his own reality.
It’s this brand of horror and fiction that set him apart from his fellow Mexican contemporaries who dabbled in horror at the time. While his work didn’t have the same level of eccentric filmmaking as the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Del Toro favored a healthy balance between an entertaining story and a rich and detailed world full of magical wonder and/or macabre. Drawing from his own upbringing in a Catholic home, Del Toro’s stories are not unlike detailed religious worlds on their own, making way for stories not seen in this form anywhere else.
It’s no wonder that Guillermo Del Toro’s feature length debut, the 1993 vampire classic, Cronos, made an impact on the Mexican film scene, earning rave reviews and even being submitted as Mexico’s entry into the Best Foreign Language Film. It didn’t get in, but a genre film like this one being submitted for Oscar consideration is no easy feat. Even if it didn’t get in, Cronos’ crossover appeal with the casting of Ron Perlman and its imaginative take on the vampire monster stood as a crucial moment in Mexican horror filmmaking, demonstrating what Mexican filmmakers could add to the somewhat lowkey horror genre in the country.
Although many Mexican horror films were distributed internationally by K. Gordan Murray, who was most notable for distributing low-budget Mexploitation horror films, Cronos still stood on its own thanks to Del Toro’s mature story being told within the confines of fantasy fiction. He certainly wanted the audience to have fun, but telling a compelling story was and still is just as important and this is something that the notorious Mexploitation films seemed to lack, despite their immense popularity in Mexico and eventually the United States.
Spoilers ahead for Cronos, so read at your own risk.
With Cronos, we don’t have a masked luchador fighting off some otherworldly evils. Instead, we get a story spanning over 400 years, detailing humanity’s lust for power and youth becoming their own undoing. By no means is this an epic, but the world crafted for the film’s narrative has this grand presence that could easily find its way into a tentpole-budget film from the land of Hollywood. Del Toro crafted this with an estimated $2 million budget, which is already incredibly admirable and impressive.
But Cronos’ best features lie within its story making full use of this world to create a compelling example of the sins of lusting for God-like power. The main protagonist of this vampire tragedy is antiques store owner, Jesus Gris (played by prolific Argentinean actor and future Del Toro collaborator, Federico Luppi), a simple and down-to-earth man of religion who stumbles across a strange device hidden inside a statue in his shop. While he is clueless as to what this device is, the opening narration sets the stage for what is to come.
Over 400 years earlier, an alchemist creates this very device as a means to acquire eternal life, with something in the device granting this unique power to whoever holds it against their bare skin. Jesus unintentionally uses its power while showing it off to his granddaughter, Aurora. While initially painful, he comes to feel a bit younger, demonstrating an energetic vigor he has not felt in ages. Unfortunately, his use of the device causes insatiable greed for continued usage and endless power, all while an American brute named Angel (the legendary Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman) is after the device for his dying and abusive uncle, Dieter de la Guardia.
Many characters and plotlines to cover, yet Cronos makes good use of every one of them to fit into the ultimate starring narrative of the film, which is the greed of humanity falling back unto itself. The characters of this world desire something out of their mortal reach and are willing to suffer and/or make others suffer to achieve it. Jesus, in all his earnestness, desires his youth to make his estranged wife, Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) closer to him once again while feeling full of life all on his own. Dieter, despite his upper-class status, desires eternal life after learning of his upcoming death, while Angel desires his uncle’s inheritance, willing to withstand his abuse to do so.
Despite the dark story of greed being the center focus of Cronos, Guillermo del Toro’s childlike wonder and personality still shine through in the film’s various moments of tender sweetness and humor. Jesus is shown to be playful and passionate about games and puzzles, playing hopscotch on the street and harboring a fascination with the artifacts in his shop. Even as his body begins to transform, there’s a layer of sensitivity to Jesus, preferring to spend time with his family despite his increased craving of blood.
This tenderness is actually the strongest when Jesus is killed by Angel after refusing to give up the device. The inevitable happens when Jesus is brought back from death, only to become a grey-faced vampire craving human blood and burning up at the slightest hint of sunlight. Yet Jesus does not try to satisfy his bloodlust, even with the presence of unaware humans isolated to his advantage. Apart from Dieter at the climax of the film, Jesus contains himself, refusing to give in and become the monster that the device seemingly sets him up to be.
Even in vampire films like Let the Right One In, Nosferatu, and Dracula, any hint of reluctance is gone as soon as blood enters the mix, leaving the fanged beings no choice but to feed off the lifeblood to survive. Cronos has hints of this, most notably when Jesus licks the remnants of his nosebleed off a public bathroom floor, but his humanity takes charge even in his transformed state, where he prioritizes his family’s safety over indulging in their sweet lifeblood.
The heart of Cronos may very well be the reason why the film broke out like it did in 1993. Winning the Mercedes-Benz award at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, Del Toro’s vampire drama was lucky enough to receive international treatment with a limited run in America, a decision that critics at the time and even now have agreed was poor, given the film’s popularity. There was crossover appeal with its heavy use of the English language and the film felt considerably more mature than the various “Wrestler v. Evil” films coming from Mexico in the ’50s and ’60s (though these certainly have value in the timeline of Mexican cinema). There’s a sincere nature to Del Toro’s work and above all else, audiences love to see a film designed to transport them into a world far and away from their own.
Cronos represents an effort from a young filmmaker completely unfiltered and fully embracing the nature of his upbringing, in spite of some of his disagreements with religion. Rich with culture and filled to the brim with an imaginative take on the vampire, Cronos appropriately served as one of Mexico’s finest horror films and is now regarded as among Guillermo del Toro’s best work, including his higher-budgeted projects. Del Toro’s debut feature may be appealing for American audiences, but it did not sacrifice its cultural identity to do so, relying on the film’s tender, but heartbreaking story of the sins of man coming to claim their unfortunate victims.
As Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid has just released in America courtesy of Shudder, it’s important to take a step back and examine the path that Lopez’s modern fairy tale is following, largely paved by the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Jodorowsky with their unique and subversive work in the horror genre. Cronos may not have been the first internationally successful Mexican horror film, but it still stands as the point in time when Mexican horror showed what it could do. Lopez is showing off what she can do this year and we have the influence of Guillermo del Toro to thank for that.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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