Guillermo del Toro

The Shape of Water (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)

(On Cable TV, October 2018) I love when a movie works better than I expected, but the reverse also happens and unfortunately, I find myself underwhelmed by Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water. Keep in mind that “underwhelmed” is a relative term: I still think it’s a good movie, and couldn’t be happier that it was actually crowned with a Best Picture Oscar. It’s a film that shows del Toro with his firmest grasp yet on his own brand of fantasy: It’s self-assured, archetypical on premises while quirky on details, delightfully otherworldly in its setting and playing up the natural sympathies of del Toro for monsters of all sorts. It doesn’t take a long time for the basic plot to be set in motion, what with a quiet young woman (Sally Hawkins, hopefully never again underrated) meeting an aquatic creature at a secret government facility. The alien-escape plot is decently textured with social discrimination, Soviet agents, power-mad military personnel and early 1960s social subversion, but it does remain as basic as they come. This is not necessarily a criticism, since del Toro’s best work has often been in maximalist approaches to minimalist plots, making up in richness of details what is too easy to follow in overarching story. Visually, The Shape of Water is just as lovely (in its own way) as any of del Toro’s previous films, even though the visual inventively is kept in check by a less expansive approach. This familiarity is also shown in the film’s themes, which is blatantly supported by having a ragtag band of disenfranchised misfits (gay, black, communist, disabled, aquatic) take on the white male military establishment as coolly incarnated by Michael Shannon. It works, but it really isn’t subtle at all. Ultimately, though, The Shape of Water just isn’t as interesting as much of del Toro’s previous work. As much as I hate sounding like an insupportable hipster contrarian, I thought El Espinoza del Diablo, Pan’s Labyrinth and even Crimson Peak (not to mention his more commercially driven material along the lines of Blade II and Hellboy 2) were ultimately more interesting than The Shape of Water. On the other, other hand (since we’re talking fantastic creatures), this is the film that got del Toro an Oscar, mainstream critical attention and especially enough box-office clout to greenlight future projects: While he’s been a long-time geek favourite, del Toro was, until recently, not much of a bankable name: Other than his propensity to announce projects that ultimately led nowhere, his movies didn’t gross much despite their favourable critical acclaim. Now that he’s been given an Oscar that looks suspiciously like a body-of-work recognition, what else will he show us next?

Crimson Peak (2015)

Crimson Peak (2015)

(On Cable TV, July 2016) Every so often, a movie manages to make me happy by sheer force of execution. Given that Crimson Peak is Guillermo del Toro’s return to dark fantasy in the vein of El Espinazo del Diablo and Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s not a surprise if the film is a sumptuous success in terms of atmosphere and visual design. Never mind the simple but satisfying story, the movie’s main set-piece is a decaying British manor in which snow falls through a hole in the roof, red clay oozes from the floor and vicious winds make the house creak and breathe. Crimson Peak is Gothic goodness pushed to a delirious limit, and the film is an eye-popping visual feast from beginning to end. The story may be predictable, but it acts as a decent framework for the atmosphere and the images, with capable supporting roles by Jessica Chastain (playing against type), Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska. Still, the real star here is del Toro, orchestrating lavish production values, fine-tuning his script until even the one-liners click and infusing a mature approach to genre elements in a unique mixture. Much like his previous dark fantasy films, Crimson Peak isn’t quite a horror movie, isn’t quite a ghost story and isn’t quite a Gothic romance: it’s a blend of elements that somehow fit together in a way that pays homage to a tradition without being slaved to it. It plays with tropes, gets much better in time (the first half-hour is hit-and-miss, but once the film makes it to the manor, it kicks in a different gear) and doesn’t let plot simplicity in the way of packing a lot of layers, call-backs, foreshadowing and allusions. If this review feels slightly giddy, it’s because I’m writing it still under the influence of the film—it’s a terrific piece of work, the kind of which gets essential at a time when all blockbusters are made for mass consumption. Crimson Peak may not be for everyone, and that makes it even better.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Pacific Rim (2013)

(Video on Demand, October 2013) For many people of the geeky disposition, Pacific Rim reads like a dream project: Fan-favourite writer/director Guillermo del Toro, perhaps one of the most imaginative filmmakers around, taking on both the entire tradition of Japanese kaiju films, and blending it with the mecha subgenre… with a decent budget for once.  What’s not to like?  And, for much of its duration, Pacific Rim does deliver on its premise.  It’s a big blockbuster spectacular, made by someone who loves the genre(s), knows how to make a crowd-pleasing film and approaches the premise with a welcome blend of optimism and determination.  The first ten minutes, if it wasn’t for the flat narration, are almost a model for delivering a ton of exposition without undue strain.  Pacific Rim requires a significant suspension of disbelief to set up its premise (extra-dimensional monsters are one thing, but giant robots controlled by two mentally-linked people are a tougher sell when nuclear-tipped cruise missiles seem so much more appropriate) but the way it sells a fully-realized world affected by years of kaiju incursion is a good way to ease in even the most nitpicky viewers.  Where the film loses points, curiously enough, is in its depiction of monsters-versus-robots combat: For all of ILM’s eye-popping work in setting massive fights in complex environments, it’s not hard to look at the Hong Kong sequence and wish for longer, wider shots and the opportunity to fully take in a sequence rather than the visual confusion made by the neon lights, rain and quick cuts.  (This may be an unavoidable issue when hundred of special effects technicians slave for months on the same sequence: the temptation to add more, more, more visual detail may be irresistible, but it works at the viewers’ disfavour when it results in an overdesigned sequence.) In terms of sheer spectacle, the film also peaks at the three-quarter mark.  Even though nominal star Charlie Hunnam couldn’t be blander (about a dozen other actors could have done the same, or better), del Toro gets good performances out of his other actors, with a bit of special praise going to Rinko Kikuchi as the emotional center of the film, Charlie Day in a surprisingly compelling comic performance and Ron Perlman for being, well, Ron Perlman.  Pacific Rim is a good film, albeit one that I wish could have been great.  Del Toro has done terrific work here, but a little bit more oomph could have carried this even further.

The Strain, Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

The Strain, Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

Morrow, 2009, 401 pages, C$34.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-06-155823-8

Any review of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain can start from an embarrassing number of attention-grabbing hooks: The celebrity stunt-writing aspect; the resurgence of the evil-vampire breed; the post-9/11 New York setting; the first-book-in-a-trilogy angle.  They all compete for attention, obscuring the fact that the book reads like an average middle-of-the-road horror novel with techno-thriller overtones.

It would be easy to focus exclusively on Guillermo del Toro, who’s one of the finest genre horror director currently working.  Few others combine his rich affection for the fantastic, his storytelling skills and his strong visual imagination.  But his obvious influence on The Strain seems limited to two things.  First: how the vampires have a striking similarity to the ones in del Toro’s own Blade 2.  Second, how his name alone seems to have added 5$ to the book’s cover price for a shoddily-made hardcover.  Otherwise, one would assume that the book has been written in more or less the same way as other celebrity collaborations: Ideas and concepts from the celebrity, actual writing from the below-the-line writer. In this case Chuck Hogan, taking a detour in horror after his rather good crime novels Prince of Thieves and others.

The resurgence of the evil vampire as an antagonist is only noteworthy thanks to a blip in popular culture that, from Lestat de Lioncourt to Edward Cullen while passing through a good chunk of the paranormal romance genre, had momentarily de-fanged the vampire in quasi-genre literature.  One notes, however, that most of this vampiric denaturation has occurred at the borders of the genre, and not too often within horror itself: The “return of the evil vampire” was never needed for core horror fans.  Still, del Toro and Hogan make no secret of what they’re trying to do in this novel: As vampires land in Manhattan, it’s time for a zombie epidemic scenario featuring blood-suckers.

The post-9/11 setting offers a few more interesting opportunities for critical commentary, especially considered within the book’s techno-thriller affections.  From the Dracula-inspired opening sequence in which a Boeing 777 lies immobile on the JFK tarmac with only four survivors left inside, The Strain co-opts some of the techno-thriller tricks to heighten its depiction of an initial vampire outbreak.  We get short chapters alternating between many narrative viewpoints.  We get tons of historical and technical details weaved into the fabric of the story.  We even get historical flashbacks explaining back-story, familiar characters, one-off vignettes in which the viewpoint character ends up dying horribly and use of landmark locations in action set-pieces.  (Or, as it happens, the use of former landmark locations in action set-pieces.)

It may be familiar, but it works well: The opening sequence is creepy in part because it explains so patiently how official authorities would react to a supernatural mystery.  The picture that del Toro and Hogan end up creating of modern New York feels convincing, and does much to distinguish this novel from others in the same pack.  The use of thriller plot mechanics also allows the story to tackle a bigger canvas than other horror novels, which is practically a necessity in this avowed first volume of a trilogy that seems headed for global apocalypse.

This potential for scope and breath, however, remains the most distinctive element of a novel that remains overly familiar in its other aspects.  If the vampire/zombie hybrids feel as if they stepped out of Blade 2, the human characters also seem to come out of Central Casting: Give me an overworked divorced scientist, a wizened holocaust survivor and a level-headed blue-collar worker! The entire narrative thrust of the novel is just as ordinary, down to the convenient “kill the head of the vampires and the rest will die” plot device.  The satisfaction-denied ending is also predictable from the moment we understand that this is the first volume of a trilogy.

The good news are that this first volume does set up a promising follow-up, and that it’s solid enough to please horror fans looking for an uncompromisingly gory take on the vampire genre.  The Strain is forthright enough to announce that the two other volumes in the trilogy, The Fall and The Night Eternal, will be forthcoming in June 2010 and 2011.  Hopes are that they will take the story in more original territory.

[October 2010: The Fall is a decent follow-up in that it continues the story is pretty much the same way, using pretty much the same characters and monsters.  While the apocalyptic atmosphere is stronger, the techno-thriller detailing isn’t as strong.  Traditional narrativus interruptus is typical for a second-volume-in-a-trilogy.  Recommended for fans of the first book, although it won’t make new converts to the series.]

[January 2024: Oof — it took nearly fourteen years, but I finally made my way to The Night Eternal, third and concluding volume of The Strain trilogy. Never mind why, or how there was time in-between my buying the book and reading it for packing/unpacking my personal library three times and for a complete four-season TV show adaptation (which I haven’t seen) to be announced, produced, released and forgotten. This third volume is actually quite a bit more interesting than I expected — to the point that I seriously thought about reviewing it at length rather than hide it as an appendix to the review of the first volume.  But here goes, summarized: The post-apocalyptic setting of this third volume is unbelievable and overdone, but it does take the series to a logical and intriguing conclusion: “What if the vampires got everything they wanted?” It’s a third book that absolutely nails the tone of what a concluding installment should deliver: big payoffs, high drama and a nearly operatic conclusion.  Less happily, it transitions from a techno-thriller rationalist perspective to one in which biblical mumbo-jumbo ends up “explaining” everything.  At least the book does, once again, make good use of its New York City locations.  Amazingly enough, the third act leaves Manhattan and makes its way north, north, north… until it lands in the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River — less than two hundred kilometers from where I live. The story itself may be interesting in many ways, but I’m not sure I’d classify it as completely successful:  There’s a romantic triangle to resolve, a family unit to disintegrate, old rivalries still burning bright after a two-year time-skip after the end of western civilization, and more contrivances than I care to highlight.  The nominal protagonist of the series has become a laughingstock of a junkie in order to set up his redemption arc, while his son is being turned into a vampire in many different ways.  As a reviewer getting back into the book-criticism game, I found it all interesting, but I could see how it would divide other readers — especially those who don’t pass by the Thousand Islands one a year.  Still, I’d rather have a flawed wild ride than the too-safe approach taken by the first volume.  In many ways, I wonder if a fourteen-year break between the second and third book may have worked to the third’s advantage: my expectations were nil except to get the book out of my to-read pile.  Now let’s have a look at that TV show…]

[February 2024: Ooh, how interesting. I just watched (sometimes casually) The Strain TV show, and it’s a fascinating case study in adaptation.  Adapting a trilogy in a four-season show is not the same process as making a film out of a novel: While the latter means abridgement and concision, del Toro and Hogan had to go the other way in transforming their work into thirty-plus hours of running time: New characters are introduced, subplots expanded, second thoughts executed and entire dramatic arcs changed.  Sure, it starts with that immobile 777 on the JFK tarmac — but as the series develops, the differences get wilder and wilder.  The overall story scope is often smaller (the infection remains limited to New York City; the climax never leaves the island), there’s a lot of flashback-filler, some plot threads take forever to develop, and the series can never decide whether it’s committing to the vampire-plague apocalypse or not.  More significantly, the fates and arcs of some characters are significantly altered in the adaptation.  I ended up liking Fet a lot more due to actor Kevin Durand; I ended up liking Eph somewhat less even if he was played by the normally reliable Cliff Stoll. The increasing differences in plot as the series progressed actually kept my interest up — the moment some characters died early on, I couldn’t necessarily predict the specifics of the episode-to-episode plotting.  Past the end of the first season, The Strain TV Show is absolutely not a faithful adaptation of the trilogy — which may be for the best… and illustrate just how off-base the third volume is compared to the two first ones.]