Of the directors who carved their place into the history of cinema, Guillermo del Toro stands out as an inventive visionary, a master of the whimsical dread, and a father of monsters and curious creatures. His films are different from most in the fantasy genre, the result of multiple influences that have shaped the Mexican director over the years. Mr del Toro’s Lovecraftian accents and fatherly love for horror tale monsters are but two of the elements that have defined his cinematic art since before he even picked up his father’s Super 8 to film his own version of ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968).

Starting with ‘Cronos’ (1993), his first feature-length movie, and going through ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ (2001), ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006), to his more recent ‘Pacific Rim’ (2013), ‘Crimson Peak’ (2015), and ‘The Shape of Water’ (2017), it is easy to spot the director’s love of everything weird and spine-tingling. But if one wishes to truly understand Guillermo del Toro, one must first journey from his Guadalajara childhood all the way into Bleak House, his beloved museum of creepy, fantastic and otherworldly. There is plenty to unpack.

‘PAN’S LABYRINTH’ (2006), ©ESTUDIOS PICASSO/WILD BUNCH

Monsters, Cinema, Death

These are the three things that best describe del Toro’s imagination and its cinematic manifestations. In ‘At Home with Monsters: Inside His Films, Notebooks, and Collections’, the companion book to the eponymous Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit from 2016, he writes: ‘When I was a child—a very young child—a hairline fracture became evident in my soul. I felt growingly disfranchised, puzzled, and at odds with the adult world. It was made up of rules and notions that were both alien and unexplained, and life came to feel like a rigged game. It was entirely composed of lies.’

As adults, we lie about almost everything—how much money we make, how tall we are, what our natural hair colour is, what our dreams are made of. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves, and yet we frown upon fantasy and consider it childish. It was this sense of creative injustice that fuelled del Toro’s love of stories ever since he was a little boy.

‘THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE’ (2001), ©EL DESEO/TEQUILA GANG

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964, Guillermo del Toro was mostly raised by his Catholic grandmother. His childhood, which he frequently revisits in his films, was marred by repressed Catholicism and bullying classmates. It was saved by books, movies, and horror comics. He started drawing at a young age, much like the orphaned Jaime in ‘The Devil’s Backbone’, and he hasn’t stopped since. His notebooks are standalone works of art that have nurtured his imagination and have given birth to memorable monsters. It’s where he records ideas, lines of dialogue, various lists and images—food for his films, he’ll say.

His love of cinema comes from this period, too. He devoured pretty much any B-movie and horror film that he could find, as well as the more classical works from Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel. He loved the Universal monster movies that made it to Mexican television, and he voraciously consumed fan magazines. Del Toro taught himself English in order to understand the slang and puns of American periodicals like ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’.

A YOUNG GUILLERMO DEL TORO WITH RON PERLMAN

In his teenage years, he worked as a projectionist for his local cinema club, watching several movies every week and passionately discussing them with other cinephiles. It was Luis Buñuel’s ‘Los Olvidados’ (1950) that proved the art value of cinema to a young del Toro, his love of film only matched by his love of comic books. Moebius (Jean Giraud), Frank Frazetta and Richard Corben count as his earlier influences in illustration. This later transpired into adulthood through his work on two Hellboy films with Mike Mignola.

There are a couple of other elements that were absorbed into his cinematic work. One came in the form of James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1931), as del Toro identified with the outsider status of Boris Karloff’s confused and abused monster. He found in Frankenstein an eloquent analogy to his directorial approach, since his movies are collages of used, discarded and different source materials that were given new life and purpose.

BORIS KARLOFF AS ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ (1931)

Growing up in ‘60s and ‘70s Guadalajara, Guillermo del Toro had several disturbing confrontations with death, the second other seminal element. He saw corpses in the streets more than once, as well as in a morgue and in the catacombs beneath the local church. He was pummelled by the notion of the original sin and even subjected to the horrors of exorcism because of his grandmother, in a useless attempt to obliterate his obvious love of monsters and fantasy. Today, the director is an outspoken critic of institutional Catholicism, saying: ‘The fantastic is the only tool we have nowadays to explain spirituality to a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion.’

In his films, the prospect of immortality that is promised in Catholic doctrines as a reward for obeying the church is translated into an arrogant desire that ultimately leads to the self-destruction of those who chase such wild dreams. In the end and despite the array of both wonderful and terrible experiences, del Toro walked into adulthood with a clear sense of belonging in the world of horror fantasy. ‘I really think I was born to exist in the genre’, he says. ‘I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. For me, it’s not a steppingstone, it’s a cathedral.’

ANGEL OF DEATH SCULPTURE, INSPIRED BY ‘HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY’ (2008)

Themes, Influences, Inspiration

In his films, del Toro often asks an interesting question: what happens when two opposing frameworks for understanding the world confront one another? Different protagonists fight against forces of disorder, struggling in their own way. Some refuse to admit the futility of this war, while others learn to accept chaos, emerging victoriously with greater powers of their own.

Colour plays an essential role in the way he communicates his cinematic vision. In an interview with Keith McDonald and Roger Clark, Guillermo del Toro points to Federico Fellini as a key influence. The Italian director once said: ‘When I transitioned into colour, I made a point of having the colour tell the story.’ Following in his footsteps, Mr del Toro applied similar purpose to colour in his movies. For example, he patterned ‘Cronos’ with the colours of the alchemical process—black, red, white, and gold, with an addition of water and fire elements into the overall canvas.

‘Colour gives you the key of the film in the same way that some songs are better in one key than another, and [the keys] define the genre of the song’, the director said.

‘CRONOS’ (1993), ©CNCAIMC/GRUPO DEL TORO

Many of del Toro’s creations feature children as central characters. They are witnesses, victims, or agents. Frequently, they are able to perceive alternate realities, producing unfiltered emotions in a way that adults cannot. Most importantly, the director refuses to shield his young protagonists from fear, abandonment, harm, or death. Well read in folklore and fable literature, del Toro insists that children cannot be protected, that they are vulnerable—and fairy tales often prove it. His films will sometimes reference classic illustrated editions of children’s stories from the 19^th century, with one instance being Ophelia in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, who is dressed similarly to Alice in Wonderland as rendered by Arthur Rackham.

‘PAN’S LABYRINTH’ (2006), ©ESTUDIOS PICASSO/WILD BUNCH

Victoriana is a copious source of inspiration for Guillermo del Toro. The Victorian Period, loosely considered to cover the Romantic era and the Edwardian age, is thoroughly represented by Charles Dickens in the director’s mind. He named his beloved Los Angeles personal residence/museum of curiosities after the English writer’s ‘Bleak House’ novel. Houses in both Victorian novels and his films are endowed with pasts as complicated and unresolved as their inhabitants. Mr Dickens’s memorable melange of realism and fantasy is but one of his many influences that can be found across the whole span of del Toro’s work.

INSIDE BLEAK HOUSE, ©JOSHUA WHITE/JWPPICTURES.COM/LACMA

Filled with puzzles, talismanic items, secret keys and quests for forbidden knowledge, his films draw their strength from a vast collection on the topics of magic, witchcraft, and the occult. Many of his characters are scientists, whom he considers ‘contemporary successors to the monks and alchemists who explored the boundaries between the holy and the unholy’—this is brilliantly exemplified by the fourteenth-century alchemist who kickstarts the present-day action in ‘Cronos’ with his scarab-like device that gives immortality along with a thirst for blood.

Guillermo del Toro also cites H.P. Lovecraft as one of the key influences in his creative life, whose work is foundational to both the horror and science fiction genres. The American writer’s vivid expressions of madness, transformation and monstrosity have been the source of inspiration and frustration to numerous directors, and Mr del Toro is no exception. There is a smidge of Lovecraft in almost each of his films. ‘Lovecraft did something very interesting with the traditional Gothic and horror narrative. He brought a scientific and existential point of view to it’, says del Toro in his exhibition book.

LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF H.P. LOVECRAFT IN BLEAK HOUSE, ©CHRIS MOORE

However, it’s the freaks and the monsters that are the true building blocks of his films. To him, they’re all fascinating—the movie ones as much as those found in nature, literature, in myths and in art. ‘It’s either tragedy or superiority that makes a good monster’, del Toro notes. These creatures are beautiful and heroic in their individuality, and they are also mirrors of society’s hypocrisy. According to the director, ‘the conventional standards of perfection that surround us in commercial culture are corrosive, demonizing the imperfections that characterize us all.’

While he usually identifies with the tragic type of monster, Mr del Toro is equally skilled at creating truly horrifying and indestructible fiends, too. The creation process begins with him thinking of the monster as a character, not merely a mixture of terrifying elements or a force that impacts the plot in one way or another. The creature must be visually convincing from every single point of view. Most importantly, his monsters strive to be instantly recognizable, impossible to forget, and downright iconic.

Many of them have insect-like features and behaviours. They’re designed for survival, usually in an elegant manner, but they still manage to cause an emotional reaction of fear and revulsion in most people.

‘PACIFIC RIM’ (2013), ©WARNER BROS.

Bleak House

‘I built a house made of books, art, film, and monsters. A house of many stories: dark and stormy stories. A house with secret passages and sliding bookshelves and portraits that follow you as you walk by. I dreamt it all those years ago, alone in the dark, but I only got to build it at age forty-four’, Guillermo del Toro speaks fondly of his home. It inspired an extraordinary exhibition that could be admired at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in recent years. Parts of his collections were taken from Bleak House and put on display for the whole world to see the creepy and wondrous things that make his mind click.

Bleak House isn’t just Guillermo del Toro’s residence. It is a cornucopia of objects, notebooks, maquettes, drawings, paintings, film concept art, and artefacts—assemblies of film memorabilia, art, and literature which he considers to be essential sources of inspiration. Bleak House feeds his very soul. These collections grow organically, not chaotically. Del Toro is precise and personally involved in the arrangement and curation of every object. There is purpose in this dedication, as Bleak House is crucial to his working process.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO IN BLEAK HOUSE WITH A LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF SCHLITZIE AND H.R. GIGER ORIGINAL ARTWORK, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

Life-size sculptures of Hans and Schlitzie from ‘Freaks’ (1932), Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft are among the more memorable ‘residents’, along with a plethora of monster figurines, and portraits and/or miniatures of Forrest Ackerman, celebrated magazine editor and literary agent who once represented Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, giants of science fiction; makeup effects legend Dick Smith, whom the director studied under; and revered stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen.

The house is crafted into thematic sections, and there is an enormous head of Frankenstein’s monster adorning the foyer. A history section includes busts of magicians Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Chung Ling Soo, and Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. In the rain room, there is a life-size sculpture of Boris Karloff in chair as he’s transformed into Frankenstein’s monster by renowned horror makeup artist Jack Pierce. Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil from ‘The Exorcist’ (1973) is also present.

THE FOYER OF BLEAK HOUSE, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

One will find thousands of books, as well, of both fiction and non-fiction. Among his most prized possessions, Mr del Toro mentions the entire collection of ‘Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Supernatural’, a twenty-four volume set that was published in 1970, and which the director loved to pore over as a child. Alas, Bleak House is any fantasy and horror aficionado’s dream home.

Into the Future

Guillermo del Toro has recently finished penning the script for Disney’s upcoming ‘Pinocchio’ (2021) and ‘Nightmare Alley’ (2021), along with a sequel to ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ (2019). Mr del Toro has also found a certain joy in animation with ‘Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia’ (2016-2018), and he is currently moving ahead with ‘Wizards’, the third instalment of the Arcadia series.

For almost a decade, the director has struggled with a repeatedly cancelled adaptation of Lovecraft’s novella, ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, originally published in 1936. Refusing to surrender and constantly surrounded by portraits and busts of the writer at Bleak House, del Toro continues to plot and work on a way to bring this particular story to the silver screen.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO IN BLEAK HOUSE NEXT TO A LIFE-SIZE STATUE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, ©JOSH WHITE/JWPICTURES.COM

Refusing distinctions between high and low culture, Guillermo del Toro is utterly unapologetic about what moves him in this life. Having found inspiration in the comics of Bernie Wrightson and Alan Moore, in TV shows like ‘The Twilight Zone’ (1959-1964) and ‘The Outer Limits’ (1963-1965), in the moving images of Federico Fellini and James Whale, and in the art of Francisco Goya and James Ensor, he uses his influences as instruments for crafting deeply philosophical themes.

Like an alchemist, del Toro takes these bits and pieces and transmutes them into incredible film worlds where monsters and innocents are given new purpose, driven by the very mystery and uncertainty that defines the human condition.

When he first appeared as teenager Sam Weir in the highly acclaimed TV comedy ‘Freaks and Geeks’ (1999), John Francis Daley surprised us with his thespian flair, starring alongside Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Busy Philipps. Merely a child at the time, Daley became an easily recognizable presence in Hollywood, quickly establishing himself as a rising star.

CREDIT: NBC UNIVERSAL MEDIA

He emerged in the spotlight again years later as Dr Lance Sweets in the FOX procedural drama ‘Bones’ (2007), where his dynamic with Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz’s characters made him into a fan favourite. With other film and TV roles under his belt, however, Mr Daley quickly proved that acting was not his only talent.

CREDIT: 20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION

Shortly before season 10 of ‘Bones’ began filming, Daley branched out into directing for the National Lampoon’s reboot of ‘Vacation’ (2015), after he’d already delivered exquisite screenplays for ‘Horrible Bosses’ (2011), ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ (2014), and ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2’ (2013). Dr Lance Sweets was killed, and Mr Daley was free to expand his artistic career.

As an actor, he captured many hearts with his big brown eyes and his childlike appeal, but as a writer, Daley creates great comedy, remarkably high above the average and far from the norm. Today, John Francis Daley is even better known as one of the writers behind ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ (2017) and as one half of the directorial duo responsible for ‘Dungeons & Dragons’.

CREDIT: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES

Born in Wheeling, Illinois, and raised in Nyack, New York, John Francis Daley received plenty of artistic influences from his parents. R.F. Daley, his father, was an esteemed Broadway actor, and the two even met on-screen once during young Mr Daley’s guest appearance on ‘Boston Public’ (2000), as TV father and son. His mother was a piano teacher and an accomplished musician. That, too, played a significant part in his artistic evolution.

Mr Daley got his first taste of acting when he played Danny in the Nyack middle school production of ‘Grease’. His break came with the role of Young Tommy in the US and international tours of ‘The Who’s Tommy’, a Broadway hit that further pushed him into the Hollywood spotlight. His first love, however, was not acting.

‘I had always been interested in screenwriting, ever since I could write things down as a child. Obviously, I started as an actor, professionally, but screenwriting was always something that I had great interest in,’ the actor/writer/comedian/director once said in an interview with Collider. Slowly, but surely, Daley began to make his mark in the writers’ room, as well.

Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley. CREDIT: ROB LATOUR/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Upon meeting Jonathan Goldstein, the path to writing and directing films became clear and impossible to ignore. The duo teamed up for ‘Horrible Bosses’, after both had already written their share of episodes for ‘Bones’, where Daley was still involved at the time. ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ (2013) followed, starring Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, and a host of other Hollywood heavyweights, and it garnered numerous positive reviews during its premiere at the SXSW film festival.

The duo then tried their hand at animation, penning the screenplay for ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2’ alongside Erica Rivinoja, Phil Lord, and Christopher Miller. ‘Vacation’ followed after ‘Horrible Bosses 2’, and it was where Mr Daley said goodbye to his steady acting work. As an emerging writer and director, the move made all the sense in the world.

‘Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually say.’

Mr Daley was obviously more than just the boy-faced Lance Sweets or Sam Weir. He was writing, and he was writing well, particularly in the comedy genre.  Following the release of ‘Vacation’, an evolution in Mr Daley’s writing style can be observed. A shift from clean and goofy comedy to the darker type—gritty, violent, but tremendously hilarious, nonetheless. The free-wheeling writing that borders on black comedy, rife with blunt-force physical trauma and dry humour is a formula that seems to simply… work. 

And that is the formula that later brought ‘Game Night’. Mr Daly truly excelled here. Making good comedy these days is never an easy task, but the film certainly proved that it could still be done, especially if the casting is a perfect fit for the characters involved—in this case, Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman, who were beyond fantastic.

CREDIT GENEVIEVE/WIKIPEDIA

Not wanting to adhere strictly to the comedy genre, Mr Daley followed up on his ‘Game Night’ success by joining the writers’ team of ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’, along with his friend and co-writer, Mr Goldstein. The film’s success propelled the duo higher into the Hollywood stratosphere, as the team have recently been confirmed to take on ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, Hasbro’s iconic roleplaying board game, thus bringing it to the silver screen. It’s an ambitious project that has already captured the interest and excitement of the game’s gargantuan fandom. 

They’re also scheduled to bring the ‘M.A.S.K.’ animated TV series to the big screen, as well as a comedic nod to the classic ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, which is titled ‘The $40,000 Man’. Little-known fact, the latter was actually Daley and Goldstein’s first project together, and it is now finally getting its shot at production, after New Line Cinema picked it up.

Hopefully everyone understands why it is already causing some serious giggles. ‘The $40,000 Man’ follows a legendary astronaut and American hero who is horribly injured in a car crash and is rebuilt as a bionic man by the government on a side-splittingly limited budget. ‘We were thinking about the whole concept of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, and we thought that it would be funny if the government didn’t have enough money’, Mr Daley said to The Hollywood Reporter.

Setting the laughter aside, what truly sets him apart as a screenwriter is the ability to take his acting experience and put it into his writing. ‘Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually say,’ he told Collider.

CREDIT: JUSTIN STEPHENS/20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION

Though still very young and with plenty of years ahead, John Francis Daley shows tremendous potential as a screenwriter and as a director. While most of his work is closely tied to Jonathan Goldstein for now, we are wondering what his solo projects will look like. His versatility is a noticeable advantage, as he naturally delves into multiple aspects of the film industry. Furthermore, his affinity for music has turned him into a keyboard player and vocalist in his own band, Dayplayer, which ultimately makes him the aforementioned Jack of artistic trades.

He’s no stranger to unemployment, either, his ascension in the cinematic world being anything but easy. Mr Daley held his ground, more than once, when negotiating his contracts. For a while, he was practically jobless after a producer failed to meet his quote. The hiatus did help him establish his credibility as a bankable TV personality, and his more recent accomplishments prove it.

His discerning nature, along with the clarity in his choices so far put Daly farther ahead of other writers and directors of his generation. His ability to work seamlessly in front of and behind the camera gives him more room to play, where his characters and plots are involved. 

His sense of humour is undoubtedly the most powerful driver for his creativity, and it’s even more valuable when he is able to insert it into almost anything he writes. A more recent example, aside from ‘The $40,000 Man’ is ‘The Creeps’, which Universal Picture has just picked up, and it’s described as a coming-of-age comedic horror. That is a genre cross that no one has dared explore, until now.

With such a diverse array of incoming projects, we can’t help but simply look forward to Mr Daley’s continuous evolution, tackling the challenges he’s so gleefully taken on. His talent is undeniable. His drive is equally robust. And his partnership with Mr Goldstein is certainly taking him to new levels of excellence in the cinematic universe.