Nostalgia isn’t merely in fashion. It is the defining style of the decade. Boot up Netflix and Stranger Things and Fuller House announce themselves as premiere features of the service, and re-boots aren’t created because of concept, but name. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is enough to cement the Pavlovian ideal of theme-music, logo, and familiar imagery causing convulsive fits of excitement and instant salivation. The rebranding and re-tooling of ancient styles and texts suggests an unwillingness to move forward, but as prominent as it is, the comfort inherent to many films in the 2010s decade has found an audience which is beyond mass-mongering.

Guillermo Del Toro’s filmography strikes a nerve unlike franchise fare and deliberate homage, as he is never milking the genres he dabbles in or its overt stylistic tendencies, instead playing around in his own child-like sandbox for the sake of his own excitement. The results are hit-or-miss, generally, with the Hellboy films and The Shape of Water adding up to very little besides design eccentricities and operatic elements, but then again, the latter recently won the Academy Award for Best Picture, so the acclaim for his work is undeniable. Influence is everything, and while Del Toro is influencing young, inspiring filmmakers with his passion, he himself is steered by the pure bubbles of love that rise out of his heart.