When a young girl named Ofelia and her pregnant mother are taken into the care of her stepfather, a sadistic military man, the mother has hopes that their meager life will be fulfilled and their family’s dreams will come true. But as dreams often seem to do, it will not come true. As Ofelia learns of the real world around her and of the incredible cruelty possessed by her step father, the young girl will quickly learn of the adult world that has completely engulfed her and her family. In the nearby woods Ofelia will find something that may lead her out of the world she lives in, if only she can make it through the labyrinth.

Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro Pan’s Labyrinth is a genre crossing masterpiece of incredible filmmaking, that takes the viewer into a breathtaking world of beauty and pain.

Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in 1944 during the fascist rule in Spain; this is the time of the story but by no means the setting. This also provides the human element of the story which is also the heart of the tale. It is here we meet an excellent mesh of characters played by an amazing ensemble. Ofelia is the soul of the story, a twelve year old girl who learns that she is destined to be much more if she can only complete three harrowing tasks.

There is also her mother and a house servant named Mercedes who are in way or another the only two people that Ofelia can rely on. While the story of Ofelia is the main plot of the film there is also a great side story involving Mercedes that is very moving to the storyline. The character draw of the real world aspect of the film is Captain Vidal, who is one of the most despicable on-screen characters I have seen in a long time. Everything about this character is detestable and from the minute you are introduced to him, you know he is evil incarnate. Actor Sergi Lopez deserves much credit for bringing this character to such vibrant life, even if he is a complete bastard.

Once the story begins we are quickly moved into another part of the film as we are moved into the amazing labyrinth just as Ofelia is. It is here in a magical room we are introduced to the fawn, a satyr who tells Ofelia of her unknown destiny and what she must do to fulfill it. This part of the film plays very much like a fantasy film as we meet the fawn and his pixies, but it quickly changes when Ofelia must open a secret door and enter the room of a being known as the Pale Man. An albino creature with eyes in the palms of his hand, the Pale Man lives for one thing, food. The sequence with this creature and Ofelia is pure heart-pumping horror at it’s finest and by the time it was over I was on the edge of my seat wiping the sweat from my brow.

This creature and the character of the fawn are both played by del Toro’s Hellboy alum Doug Jones, who as always does an amazing job under layers of latex.

After this point the film begins to frequently and freely jump between worlds so to say leading the cast and the viewer into an incredible ending in the woods that will leave all shocked as they watch it.

This is one of the truly darkest films I have ever seen and from my own review and the ad-campaign that accompanied this film, you may think it is more of a fantasy/fairy tale movie, but it’s not. It is actually more of a story of real day to day life that goes on right outside your door or in a nearby country every day, it’s a film that like life, has moments of joy, fascination and wonder, but it also has moments of brutal cruelty and times of heart-wrenching loss.

By the end of Pan’s Labyrinth I knew I had just watched an incredible and original movie, and the film that del Toro will be forever remembered for, I also sat and wondered, as the credits rolled, was Ofelia’s reality fantasy? Or was her fantasy reality? This is a fairy tale for out times I truly believe, but it is one that will give you nightmares instead of pleasant dreams.

10 of 10

Unfortunately unlike Jareprime, I was unable to pull this all together and respect the film to its full potential as he may have. In the end I was left disappointed, not upset with the film itself mind you. Upset that I feel Pan's Labyrinth was just a mark shy of becoming something legendary.

Somewhere throughout the movie I got torn in these two worlds represented in the film. The story of a Spanish Civil War horror-drama and Ofelia with her dark fantasy world.

The sequences involving Captian Vidal and the rest of the human cast are truly a refreshing treat. Vidal's frighteningly brutal personallity carries the story as we see the hope and love of the other characters pushing against him. The faun, I simply could not get enough of this guy. Never did I imagine a mythical faun would fill me with so much unease as I watched him just move and speak. This is some top-notch effects and acting here people. I felt the deep spanish accent helped him seem so much more real.

Yet, in the end, I don't feel these two major aspects of the story as a whole tied together well for me. To me it seemed the story of Vidal and the Spanish Civil War could have stood on their own in a seperate film. While the dark fantasy aspects, although breath-taking, didn't always play into what was actually going on with the rest of the characters. I felt gimped on the nightmarish atmospheres/monsters of Pan's Labyrinth.

Now, after reading Prime's review while reflecting on it myself, the ending does seem much more meaningful. However, I'm still not comfortable with how the film in its entirety played out.

9.5 of 10

Pan's Labyrinth is a powerful, beautiful, haunting, and painful movie to watch.

Politically and psychologically weighty without being pedantic, it is as much a comment on the way a child’s mind can function as on the horrors of fascism and civil war. In this review, I’m going to focus on the fantasy aspect, rather than on the human drama and political storyline; the latter are, however, equally powerful and well written.

For the young heroine, Ofelia, fantasy is far from escapist; as the rebels struggle desperately against the fascists from without, Ofelia internalizes her struggle, transforming the world around her into fantasy so she can face it with some measure of agency, which she does no less bravely and desperately than the rebels.

Although there have been many films (not to mention countless fairy tales) involving children going on quests into fantasy realms, Pan’s Labyrinth is much darker and features a stronger, more political and dramatic set of subplots. It also falls into a particular strain of those child’s quest films that are both psychologically astute and ontologically ambiguous, which includes such films as Curse of the Cat People and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. As in those classics, here the two realms -- the real world of human suffering under fascist domination, and the equally harrowing realm of fantasy -- are treated separately in the film, overtly crossing into each other only in nebulous or liminal regions (e.g. under and around a bed -- the place of dreams -- and inside the labyrinth). Meanwhile, one world reflects the other; the fantasy realm can be seen as young Ofelia's way of processing the terrible truths that she becomes aware of in reality. Neither world is ever entirely safe, and both are creepy even when she's temporarily protected by her allies. The quests she's sent on in the fantasy realm (like so many actual fairy tales) reflect her being forced to grow up, and developing a sense of having to fend for herself and make her own way in a world fraught with danger and temptation.

There are subtle clues indicating how the nightmares and challenges of Ofelia's two worlds are not really separate. For example, the temptation Ofelia feels to eat food from the evil (and absolutely terrifying) Pale Man's banquet hall recalls an earlier scene of impoverished locals receiving food from Captain Vidal's camp, indebting them to the very force that's oppressing them. The look of the monstrous Toad was made to suggest the raised umbrellas of the aristocratic dinner guests of Capt. Vidal, underscoring their political and economic (as well as culinary) gluttony. In the fantasy realm, the recurring theme of the death of small children implies that what's at stake in the real world is the very future of Spain and its coming generations.

However, I don't think there's any complete, one-to-one correspondence or signification between the two realms. In most ways, Guillermo del Toro masterfully keeps them just distinct enough so that the fantasy doesn’t become allegory. Nor does the overall film become 'fantasy' -- that is, what's 'real' is squarely within the realm of historical possibility, and the fantasy sequences can be viewed as fantastic elements within an otherwise real world, extended hallucinations or dreams, or a probing look at the psychology and visional abilities of a child.

Besides all this, the film is well paced, well acted, well scripted, visually dark and intriguing, and very gripping. There's nothing gratuitous about the movie, but at times the unflinching camera forces the audience to look directly at some pretty gruesome stuff. The effects are great, to a large extent because they make heavy use of puppetry and makeup in combination with CGI, rather than relying entirely on CGI. I agree with Slaaneshi’s review that the faun is very disconcerting, despite (or in part because of) his avuncularity. In fact, all the creatures that show up are disturbing in some way, but like the quests themselves, they have archetypal qualities that recall some of the great myths of the world.

Review rating: 10 out of 10 carnivorous fairies