Still, the movie is not without its horrors. Del Toro sets Pinocchio on Netflix in between World War I and World War II, in fascist Italy, with the rise of Mussolini. Gepetto (voiced by David Bradley), a woodcarver, loses his son during World War I and becomes a tired, old drunk over the course of the following 20 years. One night, in drunken despair, he carves a puppet in the rough shape of a boy using wood from his son’s grave marker.
When he awakens, he finds the puppet has come to life, thanks to a kindly wood sprite (voiced by Tilda Swinton). The wood sprite names the boy Pinocchio and assigns Sebastian J. Cricket, who was living in the original wood, to be Pinocchio’s moral guide.
