More of a tragedy than a fantasy...

Rating: 1/10 (1 February 2007)

Anything from Europe with sub-titles must be a masterpiece...blah! To the elitist, artsy, pseudo intellectuals this movie is a work of art...to anyone with half a brain, it's just a VIOLENT skip through a bleak, rainy, Spanish woods during a BLOODY revolution. I'm not sure what this movie was other than A TRICK to get a lot of people into a movie theater and then dunk them in a bunch of unneeded, graphic VIOLENCE: Including, but not limited to, the gut-shooting of a ten year old little girl ; a VIOLENT face beating with a glass bottle; and the graphic sawing, removal of a leg. I guess the "Saw" series has desensitized a whole generation to such VIOLENCE...but even "Saw" or "Hostel" didn't include the gut-shooting of a ten year old and I knew what to expect from those movies. Disquise "Pan's Labyrinth anyway you want: subtitles, fairytale, "Labyrinth" this movie is the most graphically, VIOLENT film I've ever seen. I was actually traumatized at the end...Life is VIOLENT enough, that's reality. Now, I can't even go to a movie to see an "adult fairytale" without getting a gagging dose of BRUTALITY. Wake up people. This isn't art...it's just VIOLENCE wrapped in a meaningless fairytale. I won't even get into the socialist propaganda end of it...this is just another of those "bandwagon" movies for young elitists to rave about. To this day, I have no idea what the whole fantasy angle was other than material for the advertising trailer. Anybody: Tell me the significance of the knife she stoled from that GROTESQUE monster...Enjoy the trailer, because that's just about all the fantasy world you get. Honestly, perhaps 20 total minutes is spent on the fantasy end of the storyline; the rest is either tragic events or BLOODY, graphic VIOLENCE. I felt totally deceived by the build up of this movie. It is not what you think, unless you are under 25 and used to such BLOODY VIOLENCE. I worry about our world if this is considered an artistic, wonderful movie. I'm truly concerned...if nothing else, this was a wakeup call for me, and if that is the true purpose of this movie, then it succeeds. Notice all my "highlighted" words--let there be no DECEPTION here concerning this movie: get the idea???