12 Guillermo Del Toro Movies That Made Us Fall In Love With His Visionary Work

This charming adaptation of Pinocchio has its serious side, as it has themes of death, grief, and the meaning of life, and it is based on The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It's not the typical kind of fairy tale adaptation that we have seen before. It's also a stop-motion film and a musical fantasy. The cast is incredible, with Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz, and Tilda Swinton.

Pan's Labyrinth is a marvelous and shocking historical parable set in Franco's Spain, where a young girl, Ofelia, finds a dangerous fantasy land where a mysterious faun sets her tasks to complete to claim her place as Princess Moanna, daughter of the King of the Underworld, with the help of the faun and fairies. Even though dangerous, the scenes in the underground world are more beautiful than the real world's injustice, where Franco's soldiers are torturing people who oppose him. It stars Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero, and Doug Jones. The film won three Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Makeup.

The Devil's Backbone, like Pan's Labyrinth, is set in Spain and is a gothic horror tale about a young orphan who comes to an orphanage that is in peril because of the civil war between the Franco supporters and the Republican faction. The central conflict is finding a cache of gold hidden by the people who run the orphanage, Casares and Carmen. Carlos, the orphan, meets the spirit of a child who was murdered, Santi, and helps him in the struggle against Jacinto, an evil man who killed Santi. The film stars Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega,, Federico Luppi, and Irene Visedo. The themes of the battle between the Spanish people and the intervention of supernatural creatures steeped in tragedy made this beautiful ghost story so memorable. It is related to del Toro's later film, Pan's Labyrinth.

The Shape of Water is about a lonely and mute woman who works in a lab and develops a relationship with the Amphibian man that the lab discovers. It's a romantic fantasy film about the love between a human woman and an amphibian creature. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning four, including the Best Director prize for del Toro, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, and Best Picture. It stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer. Swooningly romantic, it reveals del Toro's sentimental side.

Cronos is Guillermo del Toro's first feature film, about a device created by an alchemist in 1536 that a Mexican man, Jesús Gris, finds in 1996. After handling the object, he discovers that it can bring back youth and vigor, but it also gives you the thirst for blood. A rich man, Dieter de la Guardia, who wants eternal life and is dying, has been looking for the device and trying to take it from Gris. Who will win, the good man who accidentally became a vampire or the evil man who wants power and everlasting life? The film stars Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook, and Margarita Isabel. Read more: Guillermo Del Toro On Cronos, Criterion And Other Creatures.

The sequel to Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, is a horror-tinged superhero movie where the "monsters" are the heroes. The Golden Army is a mechanical army created by a goblin blacksmith that nearly destroyed humanity. It is controlled by a crown, which was split into three pieces to ensure it could never be used again. Prince Nuada begins collecting pieces of the crown, intent on setting the army loose again. Hellboy, who is part of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, must fight to prevent this from happening. Hellboy II: The Golden Army stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, and John Hurt. Read more: Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army Is A Devilishly Great Comic Adaptation.

Hellboy is the story of a demon born in Hell who was summoned from the realm while still a child. Hellboy has a human mother and is meant to be the harbinger of the Apocalypse, but he was raised with love and human values. He has a fondness for cats and works for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense to fight off the continual threat of evildoers who wish to use the occult to take over the world. It stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans, and John Hurt.

Nightmare Alley is a psychological thriller and neo-noir based on the novel on which the original adaptation, in 1947, was based. It follows the career of an unscrupulous con man, Stanton "Stan" Carlisle, who becomes a spiritualist after showing a knack for fleecing the rubes. After becoming wealthy and famous, it is still not enough, and with the help of an equally corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter, he gains private information that helps his cons. Carlisle goes too far, and things become much more dangerous. This gorgeous film was nominated for four Academy Awards. It is impeccably cast with actors including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn.

Crimson Peak is a lush and visually spectacular gothic horror romance, with del Toro's trademark darkness of subject matter and his strong themes of love and friendship. It is filled with ghosts who try to warn the lovely young heiress Edith Cushing to avoid Crimson Peak, the ancestral home of English baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe and his sister, Lucille. The Sharpes are royal but impoverished, and all does not seem well with the family. Dr. Alan McMichael, Edith's friend, becomes suspicious, Edith starts to sicken, and ghosts try to guide her to the truth, but Thomas seems to have fallen in love. This chilling romance stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, and Jim Beaver.

Pacific Rim is a giant Kaiju monster film with science fiction trappings that still manages to avoid the cliches that many films of similar type fall into. It's elegant and gorgeous in a way that not many of these types of films are. It has humor but is based on the ideas of the brotherhood of humanity and how we win when we work together. One of the things that del Toro insisted upon in the film was that the central characters, a man and a woman, remain friends and never be forced into a romantic relationship, as seen in many other movies. This magnificent specimen stars Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Rob Kazinsky, Max Martini, Ron Perlman, and Idris Elba, who gave one of cinema's best St. Crispian Day speeches during the movie. For my money, it is one of his most underrated films.

Mimic is del Toro's second feature film. It is a science fiction horror film about an entomologist, Dr. Susan Tyler, who genetically engineers a breed of insect that combines a mantis and a termite—the Judas breed, to save children from a rampaging epidemic spread by cockroaches. The catch is that the enzyme that causes the deaths of the cockroaches has an unintended effect on the surviving Judas breed insects. They develop lungs, become human-sized, and can mimic human beings, that is, appear to be human. It has a great cast: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Josh Brolin, Giancarlo Giannini, F. Murray Abraham, and Charles S. Dutton, which shows that actors tend to want to work with great directors even early in their careers.

Blade II is another one of del Toro's underrated treasures. It's a magnificent-looking vampire horror with many rad hand-to-hand fighting scenes, lavish costumes, and sets. It's got a cast stacked full of great actors who are game to go in this battle for vampire vs human vs reaper supremacy. It goes a little deeper into vampire lore than the previous film in the series, the equally excellent Blade. It leans a little heavier into the comedy and fighting with a cast that lets everything rip: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus, Donnie Yen, and Luke Goss. Like Pacific Rim, it is just so entertaining but still has lots of substance. Read more: Raising the Stakes: Blade II at 20.