Few filmmakers are as closely associated with modern fantasy as Guillermo del Toro. From Pan’s Labyrinth to The Shape of Water, his movies repeatedly find beauty in monsters and darkness inside fairy tales. Even at their strangest, his stories are grounded by characters whose emotions feel completely recognizable.

His taste as a movie lover is just as revealing. Del Toro has spent years championing filmmakers who treat fantasy as something more substantial than escapism, an approach shared by many of the best dark fantasy movies ever made. He is drawn to films that create their own logic and trust audiences to enter worlds that may be unsettling, beautiful, or both.

Not everything del Toro recommends fits neatly into conventional fantasy. Some of his favorites barely announce their supernatural elements, while others build entire realities around them. That breadth makes his recommendations especially interesting for viewers who appreciate fantasy movies with exceptional worldbuilding, as well as stranger films that have been overlooked with time. These 7 movies all offer a glimpse into the kind of storytelling that captivates one of fantasy cinema’s most distinctive filmmakers.

My Neighbor Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro finds magic in places that initially appear completely ordinary. Sisters Satsuki and Mei move to the Japanese countryside with their father while their mother remains hospitalized, only to discover enormous woodland spirits living just beyond the boundaries of everyday life.

Del Toro has repeatedly spoken about Miyazaki’s influence on him, and Totoro in particular made a lasting impression. What stands out is the movie’s refusal to overexplain its fantasy. The spirits simply exist alongside childhood and family life. That confidence in treating the impossible as emotionally real is easy to connect with del Toro’s own approach to fantasy.

Time Bandits

Release Date

2024 – 2024

Network

Apple TV+

Directors

Taika Waititi, Jeff Tomsic, Jackie van Beek, Yana Gorskaya, Tim van Dammen

Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits begins when young Kevin discovers a group of time-traveling dwarfs emerging from his bedroom wardrobe. Armed with a stolen map of holes in the universe, the group jumps through history while attempting to steal treasure and stay ahead of the Supreme Being.

Del Toro has described Time Bandits as a landmark fantasy film, and its influence is not difficult to understand. Gilliam constructs a children’s adventure without making the world particularly safe for children. The movie can be absurdly funny before becoming surprisingly dark, trusting its young protagonist to navigate a universe where the adults frequently make less sense than the fantasy surrounding him.

Beauty And The Beast (1946)

Release Date

October 29, 1946

Runtime

96 Minutes

Director

Jean Cocteau

Writers

Jean Cocteau, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

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  Jean Marais

  La Bête/Le Prince/Avenant

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Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast remains one of cinema’s most extraordinary fairy-tale adaptations. Josette Day plays Belle, who enters the enchanted home of the Beast after offering herself in place of her father. Inside, ordinary rules disappear as disembodied arms hold candles and statues appear capable of observing everything around them.

Del Toro has repeatedly ranked Cocteau’s film among his favorites, and its connection to his own work is unmistakable. The Beast is frightening without being reduced to a monster, while the romance depends on discovering humanity beneath an unsettling exterior. Cocteau makes the fairy tale feel dreamlike rather than lavish, creating images that remain strange decades later.

The Spirit Of The Beehive

Víctor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive is not traditional fantasy, but it views the world through the imagination of a child who cannot completely separate movies from reality. Set in Spain during the 1940s, it follows young Ana after a traveling cinema brings James Whale’s Frankenstein to her village.

Del Toro has called it one of the most beautiful films ever made, and the connection to Pan’s Labyrinth is especially striking. Both stories follow young girls trying to understand frightening adult worlds through monsters and imagination. Erice leaves far more ambiguity around what Ana experiences, but that uncertainty is part of the movie’s spell.

Brazil

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil turns bureaucracy into a nightmare. Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a government employee trapped inside an oppressive retro-futuristic society who escapes through elaborate fantasies in which he becomes a winged hero rescuing a mysterious woman.

Del Toro has described Brazil as one of the most important movies of his life. Gilliam’s world is funny until it becomes horrifying, with absurd technology and ridiculous administrative procedures concealing something deeply cruel underneath. It is also the kind of singular fantasy that can easily slip past viewers looking only for conventional genre classics, much like the forgotten fantasy movies that have aged remarkably well.

Throne Of Blood

Release Date

January 15, 1957

Director

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa transforms Shakespeare’s Macbeth into a Japanese ghost story in Throne of Blood. Toshiro Mifune plays warrior Taketoki Washizu, whose encounter with a supernatural spirit sets him on a path toward power and eventual destruction.

Del Toro placed Throne of Blood among the Kurosawa films he considers essential. The supernatural element is relatively restrained, but it hangs over everything that follows. Fog and prophecy give the historical setting the atmosphere of an ancient nightmare, turning Shakespeare’s tragedy into something that feels closer to cursed folklore.

The Seventh Seal

Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal opens with one of the most famous images in cinema: a medieval knight encountering Death and challenging him to a game of chess. Max von Sydow plays Antonius Block, who returns from the Crusades to find his homeland ravaged by plague while struggling with his own crisis of faith.

Its reputation as a serious art-house classic can obscure how strange the movie actually is. Del Toro has praised Bergman specifically as a fabulist, pointing to the fantastical imagery and humor running through the film. Death walks beside ordinary people and visions interrupt reality, allowing enormous existential questions to unfold with the simplicity of an old folk tale.

Birthdate

October 9, 1964

Birthname

Guillermo del Toro Gómez