Mr. del Toro managed to bring together an impressive international cast, including the Latin American stars Federico Luppi and Claudio Brook, as well as Ron Perlman, who for four seasons played the beast in television's "Beauty and the Beast." "Cronos" enjoyed a critical success in Mexico, though fewer than 50,000 people saw it, according to Mexican film industry figures.

The producers are now turning their attention to the United States, though it's not clear who they expect the audience there to be. Mr. del Toro said he was not after a general one. "It's a movie with great appeal for an audience that appreciates an artistic vision on common themes." A bit later he reconsidered and said, "This is a movie with so many influences that it will find its own audience."

Although "Cronos" presents a sophisticated and mature vision of the world's horrors, at times it is easy to believe that Mr. del Toro is only 29 years old. At breakfast he drinks milk instead of coffee. At home, he and his wife, Lorenza, a veterinarian, keep as many as 11 stray dogs and a few caged mice. His second-floor study is crammed with horror books, a collection of 300 films on videotape, posters from his favorite films, including "Phantom of the Paradise" and more trinkets and toys than a penny arcade.

Mr. del Toro says that from the time he was scared silly by an episode of the old television series "The Outer Limits" he has been visited by monsters and demons. It did nothing to straighten out his personality to have had a half-deaf Mexican grandmother -- actually his deceased grandmother's sister -- who was such a fanatically devout Roman Catholic that she forced him to walk to school with bottle caps in his shoes, knowing the pain would be a small down payment on everlasting peace.

His relationship with her played an important part in the film. As he explains it, when he was 13 he happened to be in a municipal hospital -- alongside the Belen Cemetery -- and wandered down to the morgue, where he saw a pile of discarded fetuses.

"I understood right then that there was no God," he said. Afterward, he became "a raging atheist," which turned his grandmother against him. "She exorcised me," he said. "She threw holy water on me."