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Plot synopsis
Jesus Gris is an aging antiques shop owner whose greatest treasure is
his young granddaughter, Aurora, who lives with him and his wife. Jesus
and Aurora are alone in the shop one day when they discover that one of
Jesus' latest antique acquisitions, a small archangel statue, is
actually hollow. When Jesus opens it up, he discovers a beautiful
egg-shaped golden object nestled inside. Intrigued, he winds it up, only
to discover that he's set a mysterious machine into motion. Three pairs
of sharp metal legs shoot out from either side, piercing his skin as the
beetle-like device clamps onto his hand. Aurora watches in fear as her
grandfather wrests himself free of the object, his hand dripping blood
from the wounds. But when her grandfather later tells his wife that he
hurt himself in a fall, she says nothing, despite the fact she's worried
about what has happened. Late that night, Jesus finds himself
irresistibly drawn back to his new discovery, and this time, he lets it
continue to feed on him until it shuts off on its own. The next morning,
he wakes up feeling better and younger than he's felt in years. In the
machine, it seems, he's found a fountain of youth. But as it turns out,
he's not the only one who knows of its existence. A wealthy eccentric by
the name of de la Guardia has the diary of the alchemist who created the
device, and he's been searching high and low for the golden beetle.
Soon, Jesus finds himself dodging de la Guardia's henchman nephew, even
as he begins to realize that there's a price to be paid for his newfound
immortality -- namely, the thirst he seems to have developed for human
blood.
Review
I'm generally not much of a fan of horror flicks. Scary isn't a quality
I go out of my way to seek in my entertainment -- I'm chicken enough
about all sorts of real-life things -- and besides, the monsters and
ghosts that are the staple of the genre tend generally come off as
pretty silly to me. Cronos has all the elements of your typical
cinematic scarefest -- blood, disintegrating flesh, an evil machine, a
vampire, a protagonist who makes one really stupid decision after
another -- but presents them in a way that feels nothing like a standard
horror movie. For one thing, Cronos offers its own original take
on the tired old vampire mythology: vampirism is transmitted via an
insect, not by the sexualized neck-feeding described in most vampire
lore. It's a neat idea, but it's not the only thing that makes the movie
more interesting than I would have expected from reading the back of the
box. While most horror flicks concentrate on spooks and special effects
over character development, director Guillermo del Toro (Blade 2,
Hellboy) took the opposite tact in crafting Cronos (his first
feature film, which he wrote at the age of 21 and filmed at 28). At its
core, Cronos is the simple story of the relationship between a
flawed old man and his adoring young granddaughter, with the vampire
aspect serving as a symbol for what's going on between the main
characters rather than as a means of eliciting shrieks of terror from
the audience. Ultimately, this isn't a horror movie at all, but a
magical realist character drama shot with a gorgeous art-house visual
style. In del Toro's richly textured, amber-hued world, monsters seem as
every day normal as breakfast with the family and playing tea party with
your granddaughter. Though the movie's far from perfect -- the dialogue
is sometimes embarrassingly clunky, and the acting, especially from Ron
Perlman as the nephew, sometimes succumbs to the cheese -- Cronos
reveals a director with a genuinely original personal vision. And like
its main character, Cronos is kind of lovable despite its flaws. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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