Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Lost Boys, Vamp, Fright Night, Near Dark, Sundown. Celluloid attracts the undead almost as much as blood, it seems. And of the (relatively) recent examples, only Kathryn Bigelow's winnebago warriors take on the legend in the marvellous, much undervalued Near Dark comes anywhere close to reinventing the mythos for a new generation. Interview With The Vampire did phenomenal business for a horror picture, but how much new ground did it break?

Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro's contemporary vampire picture Cronos so extends the notion of what it is to be on the cusp between dead and undead that you almost miss its vampiric intent. In it, ageing antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) discovers, hidden in the base of an angelic statue, a curious mechanical egg-like device cast in gold. As his silent granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shonath) watches, the Cronos device sprouts razored legs that draw blood. After, the calling to feed the device -- to feed the ancient insect living inside -- overwhelms the old man and he gradually becomes its slave, with inconceivable consequences.

But the device is also sought by the dying, Howard Hughes-like Dieter da la Guardia (Cludio Brook), who lives in a sterile, steel room with dozens of angelic statues in sealed bags, the alchemist's book explaining the Cronos device, and a glass case filled with his diseased, excised body parts. Through the auspices of his thuggish, covetous nephew Angel (Ron Pearlman) he will stop at nothing in his search for not just life, but life eternal.

There are moments in del Toro's film where the omnipresent bane of the contemporary horror picture -- over-bearing style -- seems to be about to kick in. Dieter's icy home and the Lynch-like close-ups of the interior of the device itself threaten to overwhelm the more human events unfolding in and about them, which makes the control the director exercises over this, his feature debut, all the more remarkable. There is a streak of very black, very macabre humour and candid innocence to proceedings to keep the audience on its toes. Pearlman's heavy asks strangers for advice on the new nose he plans; when Jesus rises from the dead (del Toro doesn't miss a trick) he inexplicably wears his suit back-to-front; in lieu of a coffin, Aurora clears her toy chest as a place of safety for her undead grandfather.

Nor does the resurrected Jesus sprout fangs and haunt the night. His bloodlust is provoked by raw meat in the fridge and, in one of the most memorable scenes in recent horror cinema, he joyously licks blood from a nosebleed off the tiled floor of a public toilet. It's this invention and attention to detail -- the religious symbolism, the alchemy -- that elevates Cronos above the norm. del Toro invests his film with beautiful, occasionally startling images, but never at the expense of its humanity. The core of the picture is not the grisly implication of vampirism but a believable relationship between the old man and his granddaughter, one which shifts subtly after his death to make her the protector of his confused innocence.

Cronos -- alongside offerings like Stanley's Dust Devil, Rose's Candyman, Lynch's Twin Peaks movie -- is proof positive that, while the horror film is far from well, certain talents out there are willing (and more than able) to keep it very much, very excitingly, alive.