Ofelia Dreams

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2006)

Don't get muddled up. This is not a movie in which a cute American girl dances with she-man David Bowie and makes pals with huge cuddly toys. No, this is one of those eviler fairy tales with baby-eating monsters and bloody carnage. The kind of stuff that Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro is best at.
Ofelia and her mother move from the city to a large mansion in a rural area of 1944 Spain. Mother has remarried, since the death of her dad, to the cruel and wicked Captain Vidal. A man who only wants her for her womb and unborn child, with no interest in Ofelia at all. Vidal and his men use the mansion as a base to fight against the Republican rebels.
Not the best of environments for an 11-year-old to be in, Ofelia stumbles upon the Labyrinth of Fauno (Pan, the Goat God, has nothing to do with this film, so I don't understand the English title) in the expansive mansion garden. Deep inside she finds Fauno, a sort of...well he's a mix of a lot of things. Imagine Darkness from Legend crossed with Mr. Tumnus, The Predator and Davy Jones. Fauno tells her that she is really the Princess of some Magical Kingdom. Her father, the King has been searching for her and has opened many portals to Earth. Fauno believes she is the one and tests her by ordering the completion of 3 bizarre tasks.
The real world around Ofelia crumbles as Captain Vidal goes psycho, brutally murdering and torturing almost anyone he can. The rebels close in and her mother becomes very sick. Preferring Fauno's ghoulish tasks to witness murder on a daily basis, Ofelia becomes increasingly involved in her enigmatic Labyrinth world.
In this respect it is very much like Catherine Storr's novel Marianne Dreams (and then the movie Paperhouse by Bernard Rose). Even Javier Navarrete's wonderful score sometimes reminded me of Hans Zimmer's score for Paperhouse. Definitely a CD I will have to get when it comes out! Despite the adult rating I would still take kids to see this. And by that I mean intelligent kids who are not addicted to Playstation and who don't mind subtitles. With so many crappy kids movies featuring talking animals a horror/drama shot from the point of view of an 11-year-old girl may just be the perfect cure.