‘Cronos’ Trailer: Guillermo del Toro’s Monstrous Debut Feature Gets a Radiant 4K Restoration

Exclusive: Opening next month at NYC's IFC Center, the revived film launched the Mexican moviemaker's career and paved with the way for "Pan's Labyrinth," "Shape of Water," and more.

Guillermo del Toro has long told stories about the gnawing ache of being alive. Before “The Shape of Water” won Best Picture, before “Pinocchio” raised the bar for animation, before this year’s “Frankenstein” positioned him as a serious Oscar contender yet again, the Mexican filmmaker was meditating on the same themes.

The foundation to all of that was “Cronos,” his auspicious 1993 debut — now in newly restored 4K from Janus Films, opening in theaters at New York’s IFC Center on Wednesday, December 31. 

An unconventional take on the futile pursuit of immortality, “Cronos” sees antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) discover an ancient device with addictive powers that restore his youth and make him blood-thirsty but unkillable. The vampiric scenes that build his genre-mandated downfall are born from the same golden DNA that would define del Toro’s entire career. Extravagant production design and creature work enshrine an intricate meditation on what it means to be human, challenging audiences to consider how individual actions change the meaning of each person’s fleeting time on Earth. 

Actor Ron Perlman, delightfully deranged and playing one of two antagonists here (the other is Mexican film legend Claudio Brook), went on to become one of del Toro’s most enduring collaborators. The director’s lifelong interest in the tenderness and grotesquerie is immediately apparent and presented with the kind of frenzied confidence that continues to make del Toro’s work feel explosive even as studios have made his movies more expensive and polished. 

Revisiting “Cronos” now, the artistic journey del Toro took from making his first movie to adapting a text as epic as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for Netflix resembles a straight line as deep and effecting as the cut of a butcher’s knife. Already earning awards buzz, “Frankenstein” feels like the culmination of threads that began in this debut — a melancholy fixation on the prepossessing nature of beauty and a tragic reflection on bodies that don’t quite belong to the world around them. 

As del Toro enters the Oscars’ race with one of his best projects to date, the return of the feature that founded his filmography serves as a kind of toast to the mastery of art, life, and indescribable spaces between. “Cronos” is a timeless win for the big screen; not to mention, a New Year’s movie. 

The “Cronos” 4K restoration from Janus Films opens at the IFC Center on December 31. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.