Inventive and beautiful.

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2010)

"You are not born of man. It was the moon that bore you."
Pan's Labyrinth is a beautiful movie. It's also brutal, unique, harsh, and powerful. I can't easily recall a film that interweaves magical wonder and sinister violence in such a seamless way.
I hate to simply repeat the well-worn description of the movie as a fairy tale for adults, but that's exactly what it is. We may see the movie through the eyes of a child, but she's living in a world where even fantasy is tinged with the terrible influence of reality. We wonder at every fantastical thing that young Ofelia encounters on her quest to return back to where she's been told she belongs, because even those that seem to be trying to help her have an air of danger that we've been trained to sanitize from anything a child might encounter. You never really know if Ofelia is more threatened by the alien and unfamiliar dangers of the night that are brought to her by the questionable satyr, or the all-too-human and familiar dangerous of the day and her war-torn country.
Creature and set design is a definite strength of del Toro. Unlike in Hellboy, where the striking visuals were wasted on a story that wasn't worthy of them, Pan's Labyrinth provides a strong fabric to support the beautiful creatures and sets that move the plot forward. There are entire stories hinted at by the lair of the Pale Man and the ancient labyrinth with its faun-shaped entrance. So much imagination and creativity went into this movie, that it would be worth seeing for those things alone.
There's a lot about Pan's Labyrinth that I haven't gone into, because it's best to watch it with as little knowledge about it as possible, as I did. Rest assured that it's a very good movie, and you'll be filled with nothing but admiration for Guillermo del Toro by the end. I can't wait to see it again.