"Suo Tempore": CRONOS

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is probably the finest mind crafting monsters and fairy tales for movies today, with an understanding of the heart, the horror, the energy and the ancient familiarities that are possessed by the most resonating fantasies.  His films are richly detailed and layered, and for all his gorgeous, Lovecraftian stylizations, his work is at its most fulfilling in his warmly sensitive treatment of relationships, human and non.  Coming from a staunch Catholic upbringing, del Toro's rendering of monsters and good vs. evil is informed by a culturally religious (especially folk religion) understanding, but with a humanist compassion and optimism.

CRONOS  (HORROR/DRAMA, 1993) 
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook, Margarita Isabel, Tamara Shanath, Daniel Giminez Cacho
Rated R for horror violence and for language.
94 minutes
SCAREmeter: 3.5/10 (not especially scary for adults, but morbid)
GOREmeter: 4.5/10 (momentary bloody and morbid imagery)
LAUGHmeter: 3.5/10
OVERALL: 3/4 

The journey of Guillermo del Toro's rise to becoming one of today's most celebrated film auteurs and a master monsters, at least in terms of feature filmmaking, begins with CRONOS, a Mexican reinventing of the vampire genre.
The film begins with a prologue that explains the origins of the titular Cronos mechanism, a device manufactured by a brilliant alchemist in 1536 that grants its user a curious kind of immortality.  In present day Mexico, the device falls into the unwitting hands of an elderly antiques dealer, Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) who discovers it inside a reliquary in the form of an archangel figure.  Toying with the scarab-like device, it sprouts needle-like points, hooking into his skin and injecting him with something in the process.  The strange wound itches and he starts to crave the devices stingers, which leave him feeling refreshed and younger, and although the thought of it horrifies him, he finds himself craving human blood.  Making matters worse, a terminally-ill businessman by the name of De la Guardia (Claudio Brook) knows of the device and with his long-suffering nephew/henchman Angel (Ron Perlman), he has no scruples in his quest to appropriate the device in order to stave off his own death.
Although del Toro has proven many times since that he is more than capable of constructing genuine terror onscreen, CRONOS is a horror film for people who don't like horror films.  It's fairly violent, and as a vampire film, it's appropriately bloody without being overly so, but particularly scary and only momentarily horrific.  There's no question that this is a vampire story, but vampires are never specifically mentioned, approaching the concept as if it were an original idea, where people haven't heard of such an thing, and not necessarily considered with a fearful perspective.  This is a film that doesn't fear the vampire for the monster it is, but for the moral threat that it presents.