Pan's Labyrinth

Pan will not be mentioned in this film, it was just felt
to make a snappier title than Labyrinth of the Faun, I
guess.

A little girl enters a magical world and meets with a faun. It's not The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but rather Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's Spanish-set dark fantasy Pan's Labyrinth.

The film follows the young protagonist Ofelia as she flees from the horrors of Franco's Spain into a fantasy world where a mysterious faun presents her with the chance to realise her true identity as princess of the Underworld 'a land without pain or cruelty'. Has she stumbled upon a magical portal at the heart of the old labyrinth, or is she merely fleeing into a fairy tale to escape the all-too cruel reality of life with her sick and pregnant mother, and her stepfather, a brutal fascist captain sent to pacify a rebellious region in the aftermath of the Civil War?

Nightmare fuel. High octane.

Pan Labyrinth is a film which contains both and incredible, dark beauty and scenes of shocking brutality. Ofelia's fantasy world is a place of decaying glory, while Captain Vidal's new Spain is marked by cleanliness and order, yet the inhuman creatures of the otherworld seek primarily to protect and comfort where the human Vidal and his cohorts are truly monstrous.

The exceptions to the general benevolence of the Otherworld are the creatures which directly represent Vidal. The monster toad which consumes all reflects Vidal's tactic of controlling all of the supplies in the region, while the Pale Man sits, like Vidal, at the head of a feast table which is denied to others. There is some suggestion that these figures are manifestations of the faun created as part of Ofelia's tests (in particular, veteran creature actor Doug Jones plays both the faun and the Pale Man), rendering even the hostile elements of the Otherworld benign in comparison to the absolute darkness of the Falange zealot Vidal.

The film is heavy on effects, but ultimately rides on its performances, in particular Jones, Sergi López as Vidal, and 11-year old Ivana Baquero as Ofelia. With these as its backbone and a powerful exploration of human cruelty at its heart, Pan's Labyrinth is able to earn the right to use its scenes of shocking violence in a way that many movies which use such scenes for mere effect do not.