"The overt references to Dracula (the final shot of a white-skinned Gris is a stunner), the cutaways inside the cronos to the throbbing bug operator, and Perelman's deliriously wacky performance all stand out as fascinating tangents in a film constantly looking for solid narrative ground. Del Toro is at his best when gleaning the most complex moments from one genre universe and smashing them into another (The Devil's Backbone is still his greatest achievement for this reason). But those cinematic concerns are there from the very beginning of his career, and Cronos acts as a fascinating introductory course on del Toro the humanist, someone wholly concerned with juxtaposing symbols of innocence (children, fairy tales) with the horrors of the adult world (war, greed), all while finding the dark comedy underneath the madness." - Glenn Heath Jr., Slant Magazine