It's a truism that fairy tales aren't so much about entertaining children as about leaving them with permanent emotional scars, but few of them can be as gruelling as Pan's Labyrinth, a fantasy-tinged drama which is like Alice In Wonderland with extra torture and amputation. It's set in northern Spain in 1944, when 11-year-old Ofelia (the magnetic Ivana Baquero) moves to a remote military base so that her widowed mother can be with her new husband, the supremely merciless Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). His job is to root a band of anti-Franco resistance fighters out of the adjacent forest, and it's a job he undertakes with bloodthirsty enthusiasm. But there may be a way for Ofelia to escape from her wicked stepfather. One night she visits an ancient maze in the base's grounds, where a faun tells her that she's actually a fairy princess, and that if she can complete three magical tasks she can reclaim her throne in the underworld.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is the latest cultural harbinger of the End of Days, of nature gone haywire and human nature following apace. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any event, it’s 2027 and eighteen years have passed since the [...]

In this fairytale for adults, the true horror is in the real world.

Extented Reviews from James Berardinelli. Approved as a critic by Rotten Tomatoes. Fantasy novelist.

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