It's hardly a bad effort, for it certainly shows us a glimmer of the greatness to come in [Del Toro's] later films, with their wild designs and stronger narratives, but Cronos really ended up being a kind of stepping stone for him to get there.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 24, 2025

…Cronos is the kind of beautifully achieved film that should be shown to anyone about to start work on their first feature; it’s not so high-concept or expensive to realise, but it’s wildly imaginative and could only come from Gullermo del Toro…

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 24, 2025

A trippy Mexican import.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 22, 2025

It can be queasy and claustrophobic in places and yet at the same time bears a levity and a bizarre sense of optimism through the darkness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2025

Cronos gallops on, in its peculiar way, to a conclusion that is weird without being especially shocking. But it certainly has a distinctive authorial signature, the work of a very individual film-maker.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2025

Rightly acclaimed, the film boasts more than enough transcendent moments to secure its status as a modern horror classic.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 31, 2022

Cronos is a haunting and heartwarming film in equal measure. This is a film about the importance of family and needing to make a choice to protect your family or live a longer yet forever changed life.

| Mar 8, 2022

...a striking debut that feels long even at 94 minutes and would've worked a whole lot better as a short.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 17, 2021

That sort of horror is a lot more introspective and messier to dissect, but much like other films in Guillermo del Toro's oeuvre, Cronos is all the more existentially horrifying the longer it sits with you.

| Oct 1, 2020

A really fun atmospheric little horror movie

| Sep 1, 2020

A haunting little film that would augur greater successes such as Pan's and del Toro's 2001 masterpiece The Devil's Backbone.

| Oct 29, 2019

Cronos, the crafty debut of a young Mexican filmmaker named Guillermo del Toro, emerged as a warning shot. His tale of vampirism and immortality is half horror, half historical fable-like all the best del Toro work to come.

| Jan 29, 2019

From the prologue, it becomes clear that del Toro possesses an extraordinary vivid pictorial sense.

| May 25, 2018

It's part melodrama, part morality play and part thriller, more Dorian Gray than Bram Stoker and infused with a heady alchemic brew of ancient science, supernatural shadows, mutant organisms, demented villains...

| Oct 6, 2017

Guillermo del Toro's feature debut is an arch twist on the vampire tale.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 5, 2013

Cronos surprises with its sophisticated and spirited look at a tale straight from the crypt.

| Oct 5, 2013

A compelling, complex and wonderfully atmospheric film from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro that is as much about religion and the nature of cinema as it is a horror story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2013

While the film's first half entices with its secrets, the second half falls into a predictable narrative that refuses to even suggest possibilities.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 5, 2013

Stylishly dusted with musty mysticism, Cronos never sinks its teeth to the bone, but despite some grumbling plot-cogs, del Toro's hallmarks -- tragic heart, splatty body horror, prickly insect-fear -- all gestate wickedly.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2012

A charming horror movie, if such a thing is possible.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2011