It’s the season of spooks and monsters, and no one loves a good spook or monster than Guillermo Del Toro. But the director recently shared some thoughts on what makes the monstrous so fascinating to people, and his answer was suitably chilling.
Image: Tim P. Whitby / Stringer via Getty Images
Speaking to Variety at the Lumière Festival this week, Del Toro discussed the gothic inspiration he took from his religious childhood in Mexico, and most specifically, why he found himself drawn to the iconic monsters that would come to inspire so many of his films. His response is a grim but insightful one:
I started loving the monsters because, with the monsters, as a child, you don’t have to think. The adults that were supposed to be good with you were bad. The adults that were supposed to protect you, beat you. But the monsters, they did what they looked like [they would do]. You swim with the fucking Creature of the Black Lagoon and you’re gonna die.
There’s something to be said about the ability to take a villainous creature at face value, in comparison to the darkness that can lurk in the most unsuspecting people. But man, who ever thought a quote about the Creature of the Black Lagoon could be so real?
[Variety]