A shallow gore-fest

Rating: 3/10 (1 February 2007)

I was very excited to see this film. It got excellent reviews and looked incredible from the previews. The previews lie the the reviewers lie. There is nothing in this film worth seeing; unless of course you like gratuitous gore.
The film begins with young Ofelia and her pregnant mother Carmen traveling to a remote mill in rural Spain in 1944. The Spanish Civil War is officially over, but the fascist government is still fighting guerrillas in the countryside. They are traveling because Carmen has recently married a officer in Franco's army, Captain Vidal.
Early on in the film several characters are rather transparently labeled as "good" and "evil." We see Mercedes, a maid in the household, rather clumsily helping the rebels. And we see Captain Vidal brutally murder a farmer.
Vidal's men captured two farmers who were hunting for rabbits. They are interrogated, and then accused of being Communists. When the younger farmer pleads innocence, Vidal smashes him in the face with the bottom of a wine bottle. After two blows, the farmer falls out of the shot.
This where the film and I parted ways. Instead of continuing to show Vidal beat on the man just out of the frame, we're treated to a close up of Vidal smashing the bottle into the man's face at least ten times until nothing is left but a bloody pulp.
Vidal's men can look away in disgust. Why can't the camera afford us the same courtesy? After this gratuitous brutality, we're treated to a later scene where Mercedes, finally discovered by Vidal, pulls out a paring knife that she had hid in her dress, cuts the ropes that bind her wrists and then attacks Vidal. She doesn't kill him of course, she just stabs him in the back, in the stomach, and then cuts a gash across his face giving him a "Joker" smile. We're again treated to close-ups of this wound while Vidal's men look away in disgust. And then we're treated to an excruciatingly unnecessary minute long scene of him stitching up his cheek, and then drinking a shot of liquor that creates a great deal of bleeding (aparently for comic effect).
Ofelia's fantasy world (which is what the movie trailers claimed the movie was all about) account for possibly 15% of the entire film. Many people have claimed that the fantasy land is a metaphor for what's going on the real world, or her way of coping, yet Ofelia never witnesses the brutality of her step father.
In the end Carmen dies, Dr Ferreira dies, Vidal dies, Ofelia dies, and I couldn't really care.