So disappointing

Rating: 1/10 (27 January 2007)

Answer this question: If your life is so miserable, would you willingly step in front of a speeding train and just end it all? No, this isn't a scene in the movie, but it sums up why I dislike this movie so much. You see, the young girl character goes with her pregnant (and soon-to-expire) mother to live with her new, purely evil military stepdad. Her life becomes so unbearable that she creates a parallel imaginary world in which she can just die and join her deceased natural parents in heaven.
We all know that ours can be a cruel world, but to most of us the rewards of its earthly pleasures is enough to desire a long full life. However most religions since the beginning of time promise their believers the greatest peace and happiness in some version of an afterlife. And it is this devaluation of mortal existence in this movie that makes me cringe, not the gratuitous violence. Death is seen as some sort of gift.
So how does the movie rate, without getting into its philosophies? I had to wonder in which decade it was actually made. Shot almost entirely under a blue light, it looked like a movie that badly needs color correction after sitting in a can for 50 years. The "special effects" looked like something created by the Creature Shop (was that the name?) circa 1975. There is no dazzling state-of-the art CGI others have gushed about. The pitiful associations to ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (rabbit holes, mad tea parties) and worse yet, to Dorothy's ruby slippers in THE WIZARD OF OZ, were insulting. Del Toro's message of "There's no place like Heaven" made me ill. I couldn't wait to wipe this movie off me as fast as I could.