Guillermo del Toro
407 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Even though this take on the character looks distractingly similar to the Engineers in Prometheus, this does highlight how the Creature is less of a monster, so much as he’s grotesquely beautiful, in his own way.
Jacob Elordi is a very conventionally attractive man whose monster is designed like a blend of the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy.
He looks like those God aliens in Prometheus.
…when the Creature is revealed for the first time, gigantic in stature and pale, translucent naked, he does resemble the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Jacob Elordi has the size (6’5”) to be the monster, but his design makes him look like a plastic god from the opening credits of “Prometheus.”
…he vaguely resembles the Engineers from “Prometheus” in the “Aliens” franchise.
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Directed by Jack Arnold
influenced The Shape of Water (2017)
Themes Characters Visuals
Some of the best monster movies, such as King Kong and Creature from the Black Lagoon , allow rivulets of romantic longing to run through their narratives.
Del Toro's Baltimore is also governed by an aquatic color theme, which establishes a link between the city and the brackish water world inhabited by the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), a humanoid sea creature who suggests a sensitive and elegant relative of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
There are splashes of the creature from Pan’s Labyrinth mixed with the Creature from the Black Lagoon in this character.
Del Toro has said that the film was inspired by seeing Creature From the Black Lagoon as a 6-year-old boy in Mexico.
Part Abe Sapien from Hellboy, part Creature from the Black Lagoon, and entirely lovable despite his monstrous features and demeanor.
Poor Things (2023)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
influenced Frankenstein (2025), The Shape of Water (2017)
Themes
Lanthimos’s similarly themed Alasdair Gray adaptation, Poor Things…
Poor Things (2023; Disney+, Hulu, rentable): Emma Stone plays a sort of female Creature in Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of a novel that riffs on the Frankenstein mythos.
Having recently seen a variety of films inspired by Shelley’s work, including Poor Things, Lisa Frankenstein, and The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster…
…unlike the brilliant and far more interesting film on the Frankensteinian theme: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things…
…on to Penny Dreadful and Poor Things…
Given the influence of Shelley’s novel on everything from Godzilla and Jurassic Park to Under the Skin and Poor Things…
Rebecca (1940)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Crimson Peak (2015)
Themes Characters Visuals
Nineteenth-century Gothic has rarely looked so sumptuous as it does in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lusciously atmospheric period homage to such classics as “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca” that also manages to integrate reminiscences of “Gaslight,” “Notorious,” “The Shining” and even “Dragonwyck” into the mix.
She may be channeling Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca, but she’s no less effective for that, and she is harrowing in a scene when Lucille does nothing more than talk about her mother while feeding porridge to an ill Edith.
It plays as a miscalculation on del Toro’s part, like he’s nodding a little too vigorously at Mrs. Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca — a stated influence — though Chastain is able to shine in a few moments of quiet, emotional introspection.
It reminded me of silvery black and white classics like House on Haunted Hill , Gaslight , Rebecca , Dragonwyck , Wuthering Heights , et al – except of course that Crimson Peak lives up to its title and is awash with glorious, saturated color.
Though it draws inspiration from Rebecca, Notorious, and Jane Eyre, the sensibility is pure Del Toro.
You just know something ghastly is lurking under her unruffled demeanor — she reminds me of the Mrs. Danvers character in “Rebecca.”
Nineteenth-century Gothic has rarely looked so sumptuous as it does in Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” a lusciously atmospheric period homage to such classics as “Wuthering Heights,” “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca” that also manages to integrate reminiscences of “Gaslight,” “Notorious,” “The Shining” and even “Dragonwyck” into the mix.
There are nods at haunted house benchmarks The Haunting and The Innocents, as well as a bathtub scene with obvious reference to Kubrick’s The Shining.
Edith encounters several, among them a hideous corpse figure in the upstairs bathtub who’s an obvious nod to “The Shining” (one of perhaps three dozen literary or film references one could pick out).
For a motion picture where decaying, moaning spirits come knockingone set-piece involving a bathtub is highly reminiscent of a similar scene in 1980's " The Shining "it is the human conflict that intrigues the most, demanding one to continue turning each new lush, sinister cinematic page.
The father returns as a bloody beast with his skull caved in, and the heroine's mother keeps bursting into the room as a charcoal-blackened wraith, but the real wonder is the sumptuous production design by Thomas E. Sanders, whose darkly colorful sets were inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
But the story feels more like a pastiche of fondly remembered elements than an original concept -- a little of "The Haunting" here, a splash of "The Shining" (still the best haunted-house movie ever made) there.
The Blazing World (2021)
Directed by Carlson Young
influenced by Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Visuals Themes Plot
There are other visual cues lifted from movies like Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” like when the water comes pouring out like blood from the hotel elevator banks, and Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," in the monster that flashes on-screen more than a few times.
Young has vision, that’s for sure, and the collection of influences and inspirations that dot “The Blazing World” run from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to “Coraline” and “Hansel and Gretel,” with a touch of the wacky 2019 social satire “Greener Grass.”
Cue a lengthy progression of variously unhinged dream tableaux, during which parallel-universe Margaret must complete a series of “Pan’s Labyrinth”-like quests that may or may not reunite her with Elizabeth.
It's a draining mishmash of Intro to Psych lectures mixed with dream journal excerpts swirled together with some not-so-subtle Pan's Labyrinth rip-offs.
While Young manages to keep things interesting through a chunk of the first act, the whole experience starts to fall apart when Margaret steps through the rabbit hole, embarking on the film’s reality-bending trip clearly inspired by Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Pan’s Labyrinth among others.
That said I'll admit I found myself thinking even more of Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth while watching The Blazing World than I did having to go all the way back to original descendant Lewis Carroll -- Pan and Blazing are both, after all, bound up in the sputtering sickened imaginations of what may just be a brain shutting down.
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by Frankenstein (2025), The Shape of Water (2017), Nightmare Alley (2021)
Themes Visuals
Then it becomes a Guillermo del Toro pastiche as Frank seeks a connection to humanity through the magic of cinema. If you saw The Shape of Water, you'll recognize the homework.
When the sexuality edges forward, it reminds of “The Shape of Water”…
Cinema history is filled with glorious genre hybrids that thrive on unexpected combinations. Just look at something like The Shape of Water.
…with Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and now this film…
One of many times in which The Bride! is unfortunate in its timing so soon after Guillermo del Toro’s ravishing Frankenstein is the lab reanimation process, absent here of any mounting tension. The same applies to Bale’s monster, who swoons and chuckles over elegant movie musicals featuring matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), but can’t match the depth of feeling Jacob Elordi brought to the role for del Toro.
…which was about a week after watching the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein and kind of getting to see these extremely audacious, kind of idiosyncratic visions of Frankenstein and the Frankenstein myth kind of in strange conversation with each other.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Directed by Mel Brooks
influenced Frankenstein (2025), The Shape of Water (2017)
Visuals Plot Characters
…fondly reminiscing about Gene Hackman’s fabulous cameo in Young Frankenstein…
Young Frankenstein (4 ¾ stars, 1974, directed by Mel Brooks)…
…a throwback, I couldn’t help but think, to Peter Boyle’s erudite version of the monster in Young Frankenstein…
Heck, there have even been all sorts of stand-ins for the creature too over the years, from Peter Boyle putting on the Ritz in 1974’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN…
…although brilliant, Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein does not quite count…
The Creature’s endless weeks as unseen help to a blind peasant were done better by Mel Brooks.
The Orphanage (2007)
Directed by J. A. Bayona
influenced The Devil's Backbone (2001), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Hellboy (2004), Crimson Peak (2015), Pacific Rim (2013)
Themes
I was not a fan of the labored, overrated Pan’s Labyrinth, and I hated the equally contrived and pretentious ghost story The Orphanage.
One of those revealed credits is for executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, whose atmospheric Spain-set horror films The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth are another strong influence on The Orphanage, which as it happens is also an atmospheric horror film set in Spain.
But Del Toro has lent his name to The Orphanage anyway, "presenting" it in the manner of Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, in hopes that the Pan's Labyrinth maestro's name will lure the crowds.
Executive produced by Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), directed by 32-year-old Juan Antonio Bayona with a script by Sergio G. Sanchez, the film is a spine-tingling, nerve-jangling knockout and a return to classics of yore.
By a wide margin, J.A. Bayona's "The Orphanage" delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years – which I hope does not mean that Bayona, a first-time feature director and music video whiz, will be enlisted to direct "Saw V." Produced by Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth"), it's about Laura (Belén Rueda), a mother who purchases an orphanage that she hopes to restore as a haven for disabled children.
The Orphanage, the Spanish entry for this year’s Oscar foreign-language race, is a proud addition to this mini-trend, with an executive-producer boost from del Toro himself, creator of last year’s triple Oscar winner, Pan’s Labyrinth.
Independence Day (1996)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced Pacific Rim (2013), The Shape of Water (2017)
Plot Dialogue Themes Visuals
It would be too easy to write Pacific Rim off as a bad mash-up of the worst components of Roland Emmerich’s alien-invasion extravaganza Independence Day (1996) and Michael Bay’s insufferable Transformer movies had it been directed by someone other than del Toro, the Mexican-born fantasy-horror auteur whose sharply pronounced visual acumen and obsession with everything weird, surreal, and uncanny has made him one of the most fascinating filmmakers of the past decade.
At one point, the squadron’s stern leader (Idris Elba, commanding in a stock role) delivers a pep talk virtually identical to Bill Pullman’s inspirational speech in Independence Day .
“Independence Day,” another Roland Emmerich joint).
There's plenty of strategic talk and grim pronouncements counteracted by inspiring speeches of the "Independence Day" variety, but the real stars of "Pacific Rim" are the set pieces.
Then there’s a kendo sparring match straight out of The Matrix and its kung-fu forerunners, a cheer-inducing pre-battle speech with echoes of Independence Day (“Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”), and a finale in which a bomb must be placed in the aliens’ lair/cavern/alternate dimension.
See if you can catch those Independence Day and/or Deep Blue Sea moments and you’ll know the sort of “borrowing” I’m referring to.
The Innocents (1961)
Directed by Jack Clayton
influenced The Devil's Backbone (2001), Crimson Peak (2015)
Themes Visuals
Bursting with references both literary and cinematic, this is del Toro’s “The Age of Innocence” by way of Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents,” as brazenly over-the-top as those films were subtle, manifesting a ghost story in which Wasikowska’s Edith Cushing has far more to fear from the living than from the dead, and the female of the species is deadlier than the male.
Imbued with the aesthetic and tonal spirit of bombastic, luxuriantly-coloured, oft-melodramatic Euro-horrors of the 1960s (think the films of Mario Bava or Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations), Crimson Peak also has a dash of The Innocents (and thus The Turn of the Screw ) and specific Hitchcocks ( Rebecca and Psycho ) in its lush blood, as well as a bit of Brontë – a good chunk of the story could be interpreted as Jane Eyre with more literal ghosts.
Just as The Others looked to Turn of the Screw/ The Innocents as inspiration, The Devils Backbone is an homage to horror comic books, and comic books themselves play a part in the story.
With its complex characters and air of understatement, The Devil's Backbone is far different in style from the director's recent blockbuster, the gleefully ballistic Blade 2. Like Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, it harks back not only to the more restrained style of '60s horror pictures like The Haunting and The Innocents, but to 19th-century gothic-romance novels and the ghost stories of Henry James.
Del Toro references “Star Wars,” “Blade Runner” and “Aliens” (it’s no coincidence that a character is named Newt), and his Jaeger pilots are more martial artists than flying aces, so throw some “Kung Fu Theater” in there, too.
There’s also a cameo from Hellboy stalwart Ron Perlman, who plays a character with the strangely evocative name of Hannibal Chau, a Hong Kong criminal who lives in a Blade Runner-like portion of the city, where he sells the body parts of slain Kaijus.
There are shout outs to Star Wars (Raleigh's brother tells him, "Don't get cocky," and I swear I saw scout troopers at one point), while the Hong Kong of 2020 is twin to Ridley Scott's dystopian Los Angeles in Blade Runner.
Pacific Rim is a war movie set in a near future that resembles in its combination of high technology with cultural and social dilapidation the grim worlds to come in Alien and Blade Runner .
Mine are Robot Jox , the 1998 Godzilla , Blade Runner , and the 1966 Japanese TV series Ultraman for various details of the scenario and design, all of it yoked to a storyline rather similar to Top Gun , though of course that film didn't invent the idea of the hotshot pilot with demons any more than Pacific Rim did.
Along the way, cinéaste del Toro quotes every movie from Blade Runner to Chinatown.
The Age of Innocence (1993)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Crimson Peak (2015)
Visuals Themes
The balance of flamboyant visuals and restrained camera movement is very reminiscent of those old Hammer movies, but Crimson Peak also reminds me of Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age of Innocence, which is set during a similar time period and uses silent-film-style irises to focus our attention on a single part of the screen.
Bursting with references both literary and cinematic, this is del Toro’s “The Age of Innocence” by way of Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents,” as brazenly over-the-top as those films were subtle, manifesting a ghost story in which Wasikowska’s Edith Cushing has far more to fear from the living than from the dead, and the female of the species is deadlier than the male.
Edith and Thomas’s ballroom waltz scene, for instance, can’t hold a candle to the repressed eroticism in Anna Karenina or The Age of Innocence .
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced Frankenstein (2025)
Visuals Plot
Of course, Kenneth Branagh’s insane 1994 adaptation, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, probably hewed closest to the novel, and that movie and this one share a similarly frantic, gothic-romantic expressionism.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1 ¾ stars, 1994, directed by Kenneth Branagh)…
After so many versions of this story that dwell on the monstrous aspects, including Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and other offerings, or even those that attempt to give the Creature dimension, such as Branagh’s zippy Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), most feel surface-level at best.
…the film retains a lumbering Classics Illustrated quality, compounded by the running time of two-and-a-half hours, even longer than Kenneth Branagh’s disastrous 1994 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein…
He is not the egotistical showman of Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
It has been 31 years since the last major Hollywood adaptation of Shelley’s acclaimed work, Kenneth Branagh’s poorly-reviewed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein…
Amélie (2001)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
influenced The Shape of Water (2017)
Visuals Themes Music
Review: The manufactured sense of nostalgia, the whimsical protagonist, the dewy-glazed visual palette, the twee romantic setup: these all had me fearing a jaunt down Amélie way in the opening scenes of The Shape of Water.
If you know Delicatessen , The City of Lost Children and Amelie , you'll be unmistakably reminded of their colour palette and sense for an interior space.
If you can imagine an aggressively adorable (and somewhat effortful) version of Amélie in which our hero fucks the Creature from the Black Lagoon, then you'll totally be feeling this.
Though set in Baltimore in the early 1960s at the height of the Cold War, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water truly takes place in Movieland: that generic realm of borrowed fantasies where The Majestic and Amélie are also set.
You’re being charmed by the Amelie-like musical score and the whimsical characters when oh, hey, there’s Michael Shannon being very gross while having relations with his wife.
Antlers (2021)
Directed by Scott Cooper
influenced by Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017)
Visuals Themes
But Cooper might have benefited from borrowing some of the sheer sense of fun and shameless fascination del Toro brings to telling fantastical, frightening tales such as "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Devil's Backbone."
We see a bit less of the wendigo than we’ve seen of some other creatures in del Toro films — you’ll likely remember him as a mess of horns moving through shadows, not in the detailed way one recalls the Faun or the Pale Man of Pan’s Labyrinth — and in important ways the beast is scariest before it sprouts those horns: Scott Haze, playing Lucas’ father before he has fully transformed, is monstrous and pathetic but still capable of commanding his son’s loyalty.
Films like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth similarly used ghosts and fantastical creatures to examine concepts such as abandonment and war.
Well shot in dreary, small town muteness by Florian Hoffmeister ( A Quiet Passion , 2016) and just the right kind of brooding score from Javier Navarrete ( Pan’s Labyrinth , 2006) allow for a properly set stage, but ultimately both the title and so-so denouement make Antlers feel like something we would have seen in the “Masters of Horror” series from the mid-2000s (especially since John Landis had an entry in the series called “Deer Woman”).
Produced by monster fetishist Guillermo del Toro ( Pan’s Labyrinth , The Shape of Wate r) but directed by Scott Cooper ( Crazy Heart ), the mood is overly gloomy and lacking del Toro’s signature sparkle.
The Oscar-nominated Spanish composer who provided aural chills for Guillermo del Toro’s “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” does it again, setting the mood for the dark thriller.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Visual/tonal references to Annihilation and Aliens , The Evil Dead cabin/vine vibes, all things oogy Cronenberg, creatures likely inspired by Pan’s Labyrinth , a religious-fervor patriarch in the vein of The Witch , the fungal-spore horror of recent gem In the Earth , the kid-needs-to-get-out-of-the-woods-and-go-to-school arc of Leave No Trace and, of course, Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing (although I sensed more of the mold-fuzz of Alan Moore’s nutty and amazing ’80s comic books).
At night, sightless incarnations that look like something from “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and sound like and behave like the marauding beasties in “A Quiet Place” (2018) come.
The visual design recalls “ TRON ,” some plot elements recall “ Inception ,” the crunching action recalls “ Transformers ” and the relationships recall “ Top Gun ,” wherein a group of cocky flyboys try to one-up each other in the name of saving the world.
Oh, the human elements are there—the trauma-laced backstories, the Top Gun-flavored pilot conflict, the occasional comic relief—but it all takes second billing to the battles.
Unfortunately, the script, primarily credited to Travis Beacham and the director, also feels like it was written by a teenager who has only seen humans interact in movies like Top Gun.
Many of them seemingly swiped rather obviously from “Top Gun.” There’s Charlie Hunnam’s maverick character—he’s too unpredictable, doesn’t follow orders and “improvises”—and all the other jarhead teams are worried his incalculable nature will spell their doom.
Like Top Gun, this is an all-out recruitment PSA for the supercool machismo of combat.
Add a prolonged and unnecessary rivalry with an up-and-coming pilot (Robert Kazinsky) and the movie begins to feel like Top Gun with robots.
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Directed by Adam Wingard
influenced by Pacific Rim (2013)
Visuals Plot Themes
It’s not Mar-a-Lago, the maskless hordes or hanging chads, but a firm called Apex Corp. that makes giant robots – think “Pacific Rim” (2013).
For those who missed the film’s predecessors (2014’s Godzilla, 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters), the basic idea is that a couple of dozen giant beasties called “Titans” (presumably because Guillermo del Toro already claimed “Kaiju” for Pacific Rim) have crawled out of the earth’s crust all over the globe and are being monitored by a shadowy government organization called Monarch, and an equally shadowy corporation called Apex Cybernetics.
The visuals are a lot cleaner than King of the Monsters ‘ but ultimately less exciting, while the production aesthetics – variously recalling previous Monsterverse instalments as well as The Lost World, Tron and Pacific Rim – comes off as derivative and incoherent.
And yet, Wingard knows exactly what series of movies he’s working with, making a movie that not only shows honor to the later Toho films in the series, but also sprinkling in his own appreciation for science fiction, with a dash of Jurassic Park , a electric score by Junkie XL that reminded me of Vangelis’ work on Blade Runner , an adventure into the unknown that reminded me of The Goonies, and massive scale monster battles that look better than anything we saw in Pacific Rim .
On the downside, the robotics rip off major elements of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” (2013), only this time Idris Elba is nowhere to be found.
( Pacific Rim , I love you, but I’m talking to you.)
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Directed by Jean Cocteau
influenced The Shape of Water (2017), Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Characters Themes
The Faun/Pan (Doug Jones, Hellboy) even speaks in much the same manner as the Beast (Jean Marais) in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946).
The best parts of “The Shape of Water,” a fantasy fairy tale set in 1962 in a top-secret aerospace research center, are marvelously rhapsodic in ways that recall films like Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” without ever seeming slavish.
Doug Jones: the secret creature, thought a god by the villagers from whose land he was torn, akin to the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” but also the beauty and the beast from the myth, especially Jean Cocteau’s 1946 “Beauty and the Beast.”
Guillermo del Toro’s new horror-fantasy The Shape of Water gives striking, at times unsettling, and at other times deeply moving form to Williams’s argument, building from a long line of classic horror and fantasy films ranging from The Phantom of the Opera (1927), to King Kong (1933), to Beauty and the Beast (1946) about tortured romances between misunderstood monstrosities and the women who come to love them.