Fantasy is a double edged sword

Rating: 6/10 (15 April 2020)

While this film isn't specifically for me, I have no problem calling it a good film. Fantasy is a difficult genre to get right and it seems that Guillmero Del Torro understands world building to an artform. Coupling that with the cimetography it is a nice film to look at. But I can't help as an adult being unable to overlook the fact that I was questioning what I was even looking at the whole film, and every 10 minutes thinking to myself, "Why'd that character do that? Was there a reason? seems like unnecessary conflict to me but whatever."
The villian seemed pretty unconvincingly evil, I wish they had done some scenes where I could believe he was at least a human character, I do suppose they were comparing him to a unfeeling monster, so they could include the idea that fantasy monster's are more human than the villian but it still feels incredibly forced.
I also have no idea who this film is for. This seems too violent and terrifying for people below the age of 12. But seems too freeform and random for someone like me actually enjoy it substantially. I would say 13 to 19 is a good age to watch this film. Personally I didn't understand why it needed to be for an older audience since it is very clearly taking from an alice in wonderland style of storytelling anyway, just make it for kids and get a larger audience that would enjoy it more. It may have even made the villian more convincing since he wouldn't be killing people every 20 minutes.
Not something I would revisit in the the future. Had I watched it younger I imagine that I would be so blinded by nostalgia that logic doesn't matter. However, that isn't to say I won't watch more Gullmero Del Toro films, he seems to be extremely talented at making films, and he recently has been producing and directing more adult oriented horror films. Which is good because some of the best aspects of this film was the more horror oriented scenes. He may be one of the better Spanish speaking film directors and I hope to see more from him. But I am personally not interested in this genre of films clearly directed towards teenagers.