Guillermo del Toro

Monsters as the sympathetic party. Del Toro builds fairy tales on top of real historical cruelty — the Spanish Civil War, fascism, the Cold War — and the creature is reliably kinder than the man in uniform standing next to it.

Signature

• Practical creature effects, designed to be looked at rather than glimpsed.
• A child or outsider who sees what the adults refuse to.
• Fascism and institutional cruelty as the real horror.
• Saturated colour and a fairy-tale frame around a hard ending.