Pan's Labyrinth is about Ofelia, a little girl going to live with her pregnant mother and her new stepfather, a Captain in the fascist army. The Captain is meant to hunt down rebels living in the area and the whole fairy tale element plays out with his investigations in the background. Ofelia meets a fairy in the form of a stick insect that leads her to a labyrinth on her new property. There, a faun tells her she can be immortal if she completes three tasks. The first task is to retrieve a key from the belly of a giant toad and the second is to steal a dagger from the Pale Man. It is during these mission sequences that things get fantastical and horrific in the case of the Pale Man. As her mother's pregnancy becomes more complicated, Ofelia is torn between her fantasy world and the real life horrors going on around her. Will she complete the third task? Will Captain Vidal root out all the rebels?
The whole movie has dark touches with the faun looking like a monster and a mandrake root being introduced that looks like a baby. There are bodily injuries that are horrible and the entire Pale Man sequence is from a fairy tale too dark for children. The entire movie is firmly planted in fantasy, however, and never becomes too scary under Del Toro's direction. In a movie with monsters, the real horror comes from the brutal regime of Francisco Franco.
I can't recommend this as a horror movie but it is quite a good fantasy.
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