The Monster and the Critics

Guillermo del Toro is one of the few celebrated directors of our time. This is not a question of merit—he’s no master, he’s never made a great movie—but a matter of the taste of our elites as expressed in the pop culture, in terms of reviews, awards, press, and all the glamorous attending events, as well as the money to make movies. As an artist, del Toro mixes an attempt at the wizardry of Spielberg with the taste for ugliness or the Gothic of Tim Burton, both of whom are far superior artists. And it is specifically the way del Toro has replaced Spielberg that shows a change in liberal taste, most obviously from comedy or family movie to horror.