Guillermo del Toro

The success of The Shape of Water (2017), which received four Academy Awards (including Best Director and Best Picture), propelled horror maestro Guillermo del Toro into the spotlight with his unorthodox cinematic love letter to monsters of all stripes (transgressive monsters, sympathetic monsters, victimized monsters). The director of such films as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Devil’s Backbone, and Crimson Peak, del Toro has asserted that horror is inherently political: “Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror,” claims del Toro, “One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale. Don’t wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment.” Del Toro’s horror-inflected fairy tales situate monsters as “living, breathing metaphors” for larger social issues. This seminar looks at del Toro’s entire body of work and the unique contributions he has made to world horror cinema and “cínema fantastique.” Special attention will be given to the formal aspects of his filmmaking, its genre hybridity, and its intermedial connections with other works of art and literature.