Finding The Soul Of Old Monsters In "Penny Dreadful"

Juan Antonio Bayona launched his career by directing the haunting haunted house feature The Orphanage, then let things that go bump in the dark behind--but he's reinvigorated by the horror genre with Showtime's new series Penny Dreadful.

For a guy with only two feature films under his belt, Juan Antonio Bayona has a strong directing resume: He was encouraged by Guillermo del Toro to direct his first feature, 2007's The Orphanage, (which del Toro also produced) a Spanish-language haunted house story of unusual dramatic heft. He followed that project up, not with another horror story, but with the Ewan McGregor/Naomi Watts disaster drama The Impossible, which told a gripping story from the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand. Few horror filmmakers get the chance to oversee Oscar-bait dramas for their second feature, but Bayona is an unconventional horror director.

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