Cronos

Cronos (1993) is Guillermo del Toro's debut feature, a grim fairy tale about immortality you can watch online on iFILM. In the sixteenth century an alchemist built a golden, beetle-shaped device that grants eternal life. Centuries later it finds a new owner.

Elderly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) accidentally triggers the mechanism hidden inside a statue of an angel. The beetle sinks into his skin, and the old man grows younger, more alive than he has felt in years. The catch surfaces soon enough: the device runs on blood, and the craving for it follows. A dying tycoon wants the relic too, sending his brutish nephew Angel, played by Ron Perlman, to fetch it. Gris clings to life for the sake of his granddaughter Aurora, who silently watches what he is becoming.

Shot in Mexico on a modest budget, the film already lays out every del Toro obsession: monsters with human hearts, baroque clockwork, faith and decaying flesh. Stream Cronos (1993) online on iFILM.