The Most Disturbing Fairy Tale I've Ever Seen

Rating: 9/10 (24 November 2017)

This is the first film I've seen from dark fantasy film director Guillermo del Toro, and I don't think I've seen a movie that changed my perception of fantasy films as much as this. I am not kidding when I say that this movie is disturbing beyond reason, as it centers around a girl named Ofelia who moves in with her stepfather, the tyrannical Captain Vidal, while also living in her own imagination. Once she's at the residence of her stepfather, Ofelia discovers a mysterious labyrinth and meets a fan who sets her on a path to save herself as well as her severely ill mother. As time goes on though, there is a blur in the lines between fantasy and reality, and Ofelia soon encounters a horrific battle between Good and Evil.
Right off the bat, the world building of the fantasy elements this film offers is incredible. The film has a very gritty and dark setting in the real world given the civil war happening, and as such the world Ofelia imagines is so grim yet imaginative that you wanna see more of it. The creatures in design are beyond words, whether it be the creature Pan (performed extraordinarily well by Doug Jones), to the fairies, to even a Pale Man, and considering that the film mixes animatronics and CGI along with makeup and costumes really brings the effects to new heights. It's no wonder the film won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Best Production Design, because this is like no other world I've ever seen in a fantasy film.
As for the content, I did think that the arch of Captain Vidal got in the way of Ofelia's story a lot, and because of this it almost feels like two different movies are contrasting each other. However, it all fits with the dark world that Ofelia would go into, and since it's hard for her to witness such heinous acts in the real world, her imagination seems to take note and it creates a beautiful Gothic nightmare within itself. I could never stop rooting for Ofelia to just get away from such a horrid man or even life, and even though the trials she gets into in her own world are fake, the film succeeds in creating suspense between her relation with her mother and stepfather and what she can do to save herself.
To quote film critic Jim Emerson, Pan's Labyrinth is "a fairy tale of such potency and awesome beauty that it reconnects the adult imagination to the primal thrill and horror of the stories that held us spellbound as children" As fantasy oriented as they are, fairy tales have never shied away from letting out their inner horrors, and those horrors have shaped kids into adults for the better. Pan's Labyrinth brings fantasy into such a grim underworld for a little girl's imagination that it fits beautifully with the contrast of reality and fantasy that can bring adults into this spellbinding fable. If you watch this film, you may never look at fantasy the same way again, but it will bring you back to a time when you cherished imaginary worlds as much as the next child.