After his spectacular Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s a downer that director Guillermo del Toro has gone back to Hellboy 2 for his next project. The Age caught up with del Toro in Budapest, where the first steps towards Hellboy 2 have been taken, to speak about his latest film and the medium in general.

When asked what Hellboy 2 would be about, del Toro said "It's about the first year of marriage" and "a deadly war between humans and magical creatures," which presents a choice for Hellboy; is he human or creature? Del Toro wrote the story while working on Pan’s Labyrinth, which may explain Hellboy’s creator Mike Mignola’s shocked reaction to the first draft of the Hellboy 2 script.

"Mike was quite horrified by how much I had deviated from what we had talked about, especially at some of the quote, unquote whimsical elements, the parts about magic and the fairy world. But then fortunately, he saw Pan's Labyrinth,” del Toro explained. “He realized that the two movies would have some parallels [or] he would still be horrified."

With Pan’s Labyrinth del Toro made great strides as a director. Hopefully, those strides will carry over to Hellboy 2, making the project a “must see” instead of air filler for the FX channel. Nevertheless, del Toro is a smart man, as are his thoughts on horror.

“Some of the most significant literature in mankind's history has used imagery of horror or the fantastic... What Edgar Allan Poe called the grotesque is an incredibly important influence in literature, art and music,” del Toro mused. "The fantasy world is what lives within ourselves, and it is a very dark place. I don't believe in this Catholic idea of a fantasy world being outside us and above us; it is very visceral, and it lies within us - like the entrails of the mind, if you like.

"There are two basic principles in horror," del Toro says. "One is the principle of things that should be there but are not - the absence of a soul, a body - then there are things that should not be there, but are, eruptions of anomalies and monstrosities into the world."

While del Toro’s work suggests his ideas, his films have yet to embody them. As del Toro continues to grow as a director, here’s to hoping that he will harness his intellectual power and create a tangible horror for all of us to enjoy.