Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Review

 Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) 7/10

Hello and welcome to another movie review. Today, I’m taking my first foray into the wild mind of Guillermo del Toro. Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) is a Spanish dark fantasy movie that originally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 27, 2006. With del Toro writing, directing, and producing the movie. To say this movie was a success is an understatement. Many people claim this to be del Toro’s best work, with the film being considered one of the defining features of the 2000’s, with many people praising its story, production, music, and special effects.

This is a movie that I’ve been wanting to check out for quite some time. As someone who grew up in the 2000’s, I’ve seen this movie advertised to me on numerous occasions, with online and real life discussions of the movie actually happening quite frequently. However, due to my limitations at the time, I never had a proper chance to check it out until now. Pan’s Labyrinth is a good movie, but honestly I truly don’t get why it’s so widely praised. I don’t hate it, but maybe it’s just because of the language barrier that certain aspects of the movie just went over my head. I still enjoyed my time with it, but I am a tad disappointed. Let’s begin.

This movie takes place during the summer of 1944 in Spain. If I’m reading my history correctly, Spain went through a civil war which led to the rise of Francisco Franco in 1936. Francoist Spain was only for certain regions within Spain, and one of these regions is where our movie takes place. Our story follows Ofelia, a little girl who’s traveling with her mother to meet and live with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal of the Francoist Regime. Ofelia’s interests lie in fairy tales. Her mother is in late term pregnancy and is becoming increasingly ill because of the baby. While on the way, Ofelia stumbles upon a stick bug in which she sees it as a fairy. After meeting her stepfather and making herself at home at the military encampment, she stumbles upon a labyrinth. One night while she’s asleep, the stick bug returns to her and has her follow it back to the labyrinth. Down in the labyrinth, she meets a mysterious creature: a faun. This faun tells her that she’s the daughter of a king that rules the Underworld and that he’s been waiting for her to return. Wanting to make sure she’s the real deal, he asks her to complete three tasks before the next full moon. This is the story of Ofelia as she tries to do these tasks while trying to survive her horrible life under her totalitarian father.

Okay so there’s two stories being told here. First is Ofelia’s fantasy quest and the second being Captain Vidal and him trying to crush the local rebels. So for Ofelia’s story, I found it to be fairly lackluster. Vidal’s story was much more interesting for me. The overall plot was a letdown. Maybe I’m missing something important but it just didn’t grip me like how I thought it would.

The characters are very shallow. The only characters that seemed interesting to me were Ofelia and Vidal. All the other characters (Ofelia’s mother, Mercedes the housekeeper, and the doctor) were all very forgettable. I love the childlike innocence and curiosity that Ofelia had. I love the ruthlessness of Vidal and just how much of a hard ass he is. Honestly, Vidal is my favorite character in the film.

The visuals for the movie is the selling point for the film. All the creatures, set pieces, and set locations all look great. More than great! Phenomenal! Amazing! Spectacular! Visually, this is one of the best looking movies I have ever seen. With a mixture of CGI, make-up, and puppets, the movie has a very unique look compared to every other fantasy movie, especially compared to other fantasy movies that came out at this time. My only gripe with this was that the explosions during a certain scene (the train derailment) looked awful. Other than these two explosions, the movie was perfect from a visual standpoint.

The acting is phenomenal. Every single actor played their part perfectly. Not one bad performance. Even the child that played Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) was good. Again my favorite part of the movie is Captain Vidal, played by Sergi Lopez. The actor that played the faun and the Pale Man, Doug Jones, did a fantastic job too. The faun was so creepy yet realistic and natural. The Pale Man was literally nightmare fuel and he gave me quite a fright. Doug Jones played these characters perfectly.

Music is great too. I love dark undertones for the score as it makes it feel unnerving yet mystical. There’s also some more contemporary tunes to fit with the time period. The score for this movie is very underrated. Also the movie is in Spanish (which nobody told me). This threw me off at first but I grew to love it. Doing the movie in Spanish was a great idea as it helps bring the setting to life.

Okay so here’s my problem with the film. I think the main thing is that it’s different from every other fantasy film out there. It takes place in a real life setting while also adding in a fantasy element to the setting. Nothing wrong with this and actually the more I think about the film, the more I seem to enjoy it instead of my initial reaction. The story can still use some work, such as why the three challenges? What purpose does this entail for Ofelia? The whole frog thing was completely useless outside of getting the key for the Pale Man challenge. The weird thing is that the film doesn’t give off a “this movie is too smart for you to understand” kind of vibe. The whole fantasy story perspective just feels off.

Another issue I have is that the movie has a lot of shock value moments. The frog regurgitating, Vidal stitching up his mouth, and Vidal bashing that farmer’s face in with a bottle for example. These moments were completely unnecessary (although with that last point I mentioned, I was fine with that because it showed just how brutal Vidal is). There was no need for us to see Vidal torture a rebel and we get to see the end result. There was no need to see a guy get his leg amputated. There was no need to see Vidal stitch up his fucking mouth after it was cut Joker style. Because of these gross out moments, I have to rank the movie down.

Overall, I have mixed feelings towards the film. Great visuals, great acting, and great music, but I feel like the film is held back by subpar writing and unnecessary gross out moments. I can only recommend this movie if you are into high fantasy, fairytale type of stories and even then this movie doesn’t exactly fit that bill because of the war/rebel story with Vidal. If you are interested in seeing this, mainly go in for the spectacular visuals and amazing acting skills. Other than that, you can skip this movie.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.