RANKED

Guillermo del Toro Movies, Ranked

Q: What is the worst Guillermo del Toro movie?

Pacific Rim (2013) sits at the bottom of my ranking, though it’s still a lot of fun.

By Matt Oakes · October 29, 2026

Guillermo del Toro has spent more than three decades proving that monsters are often the most human characters in the room. The Mexican filmmaker’s career splits neatly into three lanes: intimate Spanish-language fairy tales (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth), big-swing Hollywood genre fare (Blade II, the two Hellboy films, Pacific Rim) and the lavish gothic prestige of his later work (Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, Pinocchio and Frankenstein).

Along the way he’s won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for The Shape of Water and Best Animated Feature for Pinocchio, and his long-gestating Frankenstein added more Oscar wins to his shelf in 2026. Commercially, Pacific Rim remains his biggest hit at more than $400 million worldwide, but it’s his gothic fairy tales that have made him one of the most beloved filmmakers working today. His upcoming projects including the stop-motion animated feature The Buried Giant, which will be released via Netflix, and “very violent” thriller, currently titled Fury.

Quick list:

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
The Shape of Water (2017)
Crimson Peak (2015)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Frankenstein (2025)
Cronos (1992)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
Hellboy (2004)
Mimic (1997)
Blade II (2002)
Pacific Rim (2013)

Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of October 2026.

13. PACIFIC RIM (2013)

72%Critics 77%Audience 6.9IMDb

Del Toro’s giant-robots-versus-giant-monsters blockbuster has its devoted fans, and it’s easy to see why: the scale is enormous, the kaiju designs are gorgeous and Idris Elba gets to cancel the apocalypse. For me, though, it’s his weakest film. The story is clearly derivative of the money-raking blockbusters that came before it, the action is oddly tepid, and the frenetic, often blinding cinematography makes too many of the battles hard to follow. Marked by the emotional complexity of a Michael Bay movie, Pacific Rim is a spectacle-driven showdown that rarely becomes anything more, and the rare del Toro film that feels like it could have been directed by almost anyone.▶ Streaming on VIX and YouTube Free · Read the full review

11. MIMIC (1997)

68%Critics 37%Audience 6.0IMDb

The movie that allegedly broke Guillermo del Toro’s relationship with the studio system, Mimic is a buggy, brassy, loud creature feature. An epidemic is killing Manhattan’s children, and the genetically engineered insects designed to stop it have evolved into something far worse, giving del Toro plenty of room to indulge his preoccupation with children in distress, including a young boy who can speak the creatures’ clicking language. Some of the early CG holds up surprisingly well, perhaps a testament to how much he captured practically, and there are brooding gothic flourishes and camera cleverness to spare. (It’s rainy, dark and dreary pretty much all the time.)

An argument could be made that it’s underrated, but mostly it’s a chore: the kind of disposable ’90s horror dreck that was commonplace at the time, with only flashes of the filmmaker del Toro would become.

▶ Streaming on Paramount+ and MGM+

12. BLADE II (2002)

57%Critics 68%Audience 6.7IMDb

Del Toro’s lone work-for-hire gig is a gleefully gory B-movie with A-grade creature design. Wesley Snipes’ daywalker teams up with the vampire nation he hunts to battle the Reapers, mutant bloodsuckers whose jaws split open in one of the most memorably grotesque designs of the era. Thin story, dated CG and wall-to-wall leather, but as pure early-2000s action horror goes, it bites hard.

▶ Streaming on Peacock

10. HELLBOY (2004)

81%Critics 66%Audience 6.9IMDb

Long before superhero movies became assembly lines, del Toro made one that felt handmade. Because Hellboy largely is. Ron Perlman was born to play Mike Mignola’s cigar-chomping, kitten-loving demon, and the Nazi occultists, tentacled horrors and Doug Jones’ graceful Abe Sapien give the whole thing a lovingly practical texture. The plotting is creaky and the villain forgettable, but the heart is unmistakable: a story about a monster who chooses to be good.

▶ Streaming on fuboTV and Kanopy

9. HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2008)

86%Critics 71%Audience 7.0IMDb

With Hellboy II: The Golden Army, del Toro got the keys to the creature shop and went absolutely wild. The Troll Market alone teems with more imagination than most entire franchises, and the Angel of Death sequence is pure del Toro nightmare fuel. Ron Perlman’s cigar-chomping demon remains a perfect fit, and the story of a dying magical world fighting back against humanity gives the spectacle real melancholy. A comic book movie made by a monster lover, for monster lovers.

▶ Streaming on Philo and Starz

8. CRONOS (1992)

88%Critics 69%Audience 6.7IMDb

Del Toro’s feature debut is a scrappy, strange, wonderfully grim spin on the vampire story. An aging antiques dealer (Federico Luppi) stumbles on a golden, clockwork scarab that grants eternal life at a gruesome cost, while a dying industrialist and his brutish nephew (Ron Perlman, beginning a long partnership) come hunting for it. The budget shows, but the obsessions (insects, clockwork, decaying bodies, tender monsters) are all already here. A fascinating blueprint.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max

7. FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

85%Critics 94%Audience 7.4IMDb

Guillermo del Toro seemed destined to tackle Frankenstein eventually. The fact that he finally got around to it feels less like a surprise than a gothic inevitability, summoned with clear adoration for the source material and a meticulous eye for detail. His entire career has circled the idea of misunderstood monsters and the nobility buried within those abandoned to the fringes.

A gorgeous retelling of a classic tale about the monsters that dwell within us, Del Toro’s take on Frankenstein features a standout turn from Jacob Elordi but remains a middle of the pack effort from the beloved Gothic storyteller. Much like the creature in this story, desperately wanting to understand why it is here, the film lacks its own sense of purpose.▶ Watch on Netflix · Read the full review

6. NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)

80%Critics 68%Audience 7.0IMDb

In Guillermo del Toro’s remake of Edmund Goulding’s 1947 film noir Nightmare Alley, a traveling circus boasts a caged geek. For a quarter a piece, horrified onlookers watch as the hunched and filthy man scrambles to tear the head off a squawking chicken, though they fail to notice the tears streaming down his face as he does so.

A B-movie carny noir shot with the handsome care of a prestige picture, Nightmare Alley is a gloomy product firmly in Del Toro’s wheelhouse, and the Oscar-winning director knows just how to handle such illicit, gloomy drama. Winding and palpably chilly, the film leads to an undeniable knock-out ending that’s sure to leave one shaken.▶ Watch on Hulu · Read the full review

5. THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE (2001)

93%Critics 89%Audience 7.3IMDb

The spiritual twin to Pan’s Labyrinth, and nearly its equal. At an isolated orphanage in the final days of the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos arrives to find an unexploded bomb lodged in the courtyard and a pale, whispering ghost haunting the halls. Del Toro knows a ghost story is really a story about grief, and the living prove far more dangerous than the dead. Moody, melancholy and quietly devastating, it’s the moment his gothic sensibility fully came into focus.

▶ Streaming on Fawesome and Tubi TV

4. GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO (2022)

96%Critics 85%Audience 7.6IMDb

Del Toro reclaims Carlo Collodi’s puppet from Disney’s sanitized version and hands him back his darkness. Co-directed with stop-motion veteran Mark Gustafson, this Pinocchio unfolds in Mussolini’s Italy, where a grieving woodcarver’s wooden son stumbles through death, fascism and the circus. It’s handmade, heartbreaking and frequently gorgeous, a story about obedience and imperfection that earns every one of its tears.

▶ Streaming on Netflix

3. CRIMSON PEAK (2015)

72%Critics 56%Audience 6.5IMDb

Only in a Guillermo del Toro yarn would the setting – a decrepit Victorian estate housing buried, but not forgotten, secrets – literally drip blood. His is the humor of a tongue buried deeply in a cheek, almost to the point of popping through to the other side. It’s not actually blood that is dripping but there’s no mistaking what the globular rouge streaks running down the wallpaper is supposed to resemble.

Crimson Peak is a worthy Gothic yarn from Guillermo del Toro, abundantly rich in dreary atmospherics and made great by its two deliciously playful villains.▶ Watch on Netflix · Read the full review

2. THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017)

92%Critics 73%Audience 7.3IMDb

Far and away the best of Guillermo del Toro’s English language features, The Shape of Water, like Dr. Frankenstein stitching together disparate appendages, conjoins the romanticism of the 1930s Classic Universal Monsters Movies, the conspiratorial grit of the 70s Hammer Films and a splash of Max, Mon Amour to craft a truly one-of-a-kind, genre-bending splat of modern monster cinema.

The Shape of Water shucks convention in making a throwback to the monster movies of yesteryear, showcasing Guillermo del Toro’s soaring visual style and a breathtaking lead performance from Sally Hawkins while telling a love story from the most bizarre, and somehow moving, of angles. Fans of esoteric erotica, prepare to swoon.▶ Watch on HBO Max · Read the full review

1. PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006)

95%Critics 91%Audience 8.2IMDb

Del Toro’s masterpiece, and one of the great fairy tales ever put to film. In 1944 Spain, young Ofelia escapes the cruelty of her fascist stepfather, Captain Vidal (a chilling Sergi López), into a crumbling labyrinth where a towering Faun sets her three impossible tasks. The Pale Man, with his eyes in his palms, remains one of the most nightmarish creations in modern cinema, but the real monsters wear uniforms. Equal parts bedtime story and war film, gorgeous and gutting, Pan’s Labyrinth is the purest distillation of everything del Toro believes about monsters and men.