After seeing a few very promising teaser trailers and reading a four-star review this morning in the paper, I decided to catch a matinee showing of Pan's Labyrinth.

From those snippets, I expected a dark and gothic fantasy fable. What I got instead was an at times gory narration of one facist captain's repressive and brutal rule of a rural military outpost in end-World-War II Spain. All in Spanish, with English subtitles, no less (which neither the review, nor the previews led on to).

The story is told through the eyes of an innocent young girl, Ofelia, who is still enchanted with the world of fairy tales (caution here too: this is not a kids' movie - it included scenes of bloody violence not suitable for children), but after arriving at the outpost with her pregnant mother, quickly has to come to terms with the reality that the monstrous captain is her new stepfather.

So sure - the parts of the movie that deal with the fantasy world Ofelia encounters after following a fairy into Pan's labyrinth are *extremely* cool and well-crafted. There's Pan, the faun, whose tree-like body creaks when he moves. There is a praying mantis that magically transforms into a small dark fairy. There is a really scary baby-eating, eye-less monster that chases after Ofelia. There is a mandrake root that comes to life in a bowl of milk and squeals like a baby. And there's a huge slimy toad who lives in the root system of a tree and eats crawly bugs.



All those bizarre creatures are perfect in their make-up artistry. The special effects are seamless (especially concerning the three buzzing fairies). The audio is a pleasure to listen to due to its exaggerated focus on creaking walls and squeaking leather. And the set design for the labyrinth and the other fantasy world locations is quite simply exquisite. So much, actually, that I wished the whole movie would have taken place there.

But alas (and this is the disappointing part) - while the heart of the movie really lies in that beautifully gothic world, it ends up spending the bulk of its screen time with the cruel captain and his quest to hunt down resistance fighters in the forested hills.

Why that choice was made by director Guillermo Del Toro (who also directed the awesome Hellboy and the even better Cronos) is really beyond me. It almost felt like he didn't have the courage (or the budget) to commit to a full-length dark and twisted version of "Alice in Wonderland" - and at the same time, he also didn't have the heart to make a full-length movie about the Spanish resistance in World War II. Either movie could have been awesome in its own way - yet meshed together, it somehow seemed to lose its magic.

So I ended up walking out of the theater, feeling a bit let down and disappointed. I can recommend it due to its fabulous creatures and sets - but just be aware that if you're really into that sort of stuff and want to see it for that reason, you'll come out feeling short-changed. Maybe better wait for it to come out on DVD, when you'll be able to pause the movie and appreciate the fantasy world in all its splendor...

how unfortunate that you walked out of the film when the climax the morale of the story the best part was at the end... which far exceeded the creatures of myth, joseph campbell would of loved this film and its message is very real to todays world of war

Actually, I didn't walk out of the movie. I stayed until the very end. I meant the "walking" part literally ...

But anyway - my issue with the movie really was that it was *pitched* as a fantasy, when it really had a very different agenda. Had the trailers and reviews mentioned that the movie would mainly deal with the Spanish resistance, I would have gone in with a very different expectation, and probably wouldn't have come out as disappointed as I did.

So really, this was a marketing snafu.

I actually just got home from watching this movie with several others from my Spanish Club and I really liked the movie. Albeit, I'm different in that my 4 year old watched the movie too. Nothing in there was anymore graphic than our current CNN news. I did some surfing around before watching the movie so I went in with my eyes wide open and the only part that disappointed me was that he didn't die a harsher death, lol. All in all, I personally recommend the movie to all that can tolerate subtitles if you don't speak Spanish.

I finally caught this movie on Sunday. I knew very little about it, so maybe my expectations were a bit different. I saw the story overall very good.

One thing I that liked was at the end when the Captain is approaching Ofelia (how did he get through the magical walls that just previously moved for Ofelia?) you see the faun and from a brief second you see his vantage point with no faun.

This sort of made me wonder if the point of the story was that war is so gruesome and horrible and for the mind of a young girl placed in such a horrible place she would do anything to escape from it, even if it was only in her mind.

She had no chores, too much free time and vivid imagination.

What was real and what wasn't? Any movie that makes you think about it and question what you saw gets a thumbs up from me.