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Pan's Labyrinth
Picturehouse

Pan's Labyrinth reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 98 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.3 out of 10
based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 884 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for graphic violence and some language

Starring Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ariadna Gil, Doug Jones, Álex Angulo, Roger Casamajor, and César Vea

Guillermo del Toro delivers a unique, richly-imagined epic with Pan's Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression of Franco's Spain.


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Fantasy  |  Foreign  |  Horror  |  Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Guillermo del Toro  
DIRECTED BY: Guillermo del Toro  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: May 15, 2007 
Theatrical: December 29, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Mexico / Spain / USA 
LANGUAGE(S): Spanish (with English subtitles) 

Received a total of 6 Academy Award nominations. Nominated, Golden Palm, 2006 Cannes Film Festival; Nominated Best Cinematography and Best Feature, 2007 Independent Spirit Awards. Original title "El Laberinto del Fauno."

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
This is like no movie you've seen before, a haunting mixture of horror, history and fantasy that works simultaneously on every level.
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100
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Pan's Labyrinth Like his terrific 2001 "The Devil’s Backbone," Mexican horrormeister Guillermo del Toro's new movie offers us both real-life and fantastical monsters, and if you know his work, you won't waste time figuring out which to root for.
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100
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.
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100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The result of the intricate interplay is a fairy tale for adults that is violent, sometimes shocking, yet utterly engrossing. And eerily instructive; it deepens our emotional understanding of fascism, and of rigid ideology's dire consequences.
100
The New York Times A.O. Scott
A swift and accessible entertainment, blunt in its power and exquisite in its effects.
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100
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Unlike most horror movies, this chiller gives equal prominence to reality and fantasy, though the reality is far more frightening. The only precedent that comes to mind in terms of a lyrical treatment of a child's experience of terror is "The Night of the Hunter."
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100
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Del Toro's film ranks with the best examinations of children's inner lives, but be warned: Its haunting insights are best left to adults.
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100
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.
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100
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Nothing this year comes close to being as utterly unforgettable as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, an extremely dark and disturbing fairy tale for audiences say, ages 12 and up.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.
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100
Premiere Glenn Kenny
This intense film, a mix of horror, fantasy, and history that convinces on all those levels and mixes them up with dizzying brio, is a searing cinematic experience, a beautiful, terrifying vision from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
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100
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Literally and figuratively marvelous, a rich, daring mix of fantasy and politics.
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100
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.
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100
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
In tone, Pan's Labyrinth resembles a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and H.P. Lovecraft, with some Buñuel thrown in for good measure. It is a tribute to - as well as a prime example of - the disturbing power of imagination.
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100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Like the folk tales from centuries past, Pan's Labyrinth is a dark odyssey with nightmarish visions and cruel threats, but coming through the sacrifice and suffering is the childlike belief in magic and imagination that for Del Toro represents the hope and optimism of a happily ever after in this cruel world.
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100
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
These creatures of the underworld are the fervid fabrications of del Toro's imagination: More than once they will catch you by surprise and make you gasp.
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100
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Pan's Labyrinth is a transcendent work of art.
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100
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the invigorating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.
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100
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
This is the breakthrough work of one of world cinema's most visionary artists.
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100
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
With this film, del Toro seems to have created his manifesto, a tour de force of cautionary zeal, humanism and magic. At this writing, Pan's Labyrinth is the best-reviewed film of 2006 listed on the movie review Web site Metacritic.com, and for a reason: It's just that great.
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100
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Like any great myth, Pan's Labyrinth encodes its messages through displays of magic. And like any good fairy tale, it is also embroidered with threads of death and loss.
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100
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
We don't find out until the last scene how reality and fantasy intersect, when the meaning of the first shot of the film gets driven home. How many movies have you seen with a payoff like that?
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100
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Del Toro presents one dazzling visual spectacle after another.
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100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.
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100
Empire Kim Newman
Dark, twisted and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect.
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91
The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
After two hours of dazzlingly fantastical images and stomach-turning gore, del Toro winds around, and finds his story's center.
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90
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
So smartly has del Toro thought his fable through, and so graceful is his grasp of visual rhyme, that to pick holes in it seems mean; yet Pan's Labyrinth is perhaps more dazzling than involving--I was too busy reading its runes and clues, as it were, to be swept away. It is, I suspect, a film to return to, like a country waiting to be explored: a maze of dead ends and new life.
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90
Film Threat Don R. Lewis
The action scenes are exciting, the fantasy scenes are creative and the war scenes are brutal.
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90
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
With Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro has made his most accomplished film to date, a dark and disturbing fairy tale for adults that's been thought out to the nth degree and resonates with the irresistible inevitability of a timeless myth.
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90
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
This is a true fairy tale, and one of the finest fantasy pictures ever made, but please do not take your young children to see it unless you want them to be scarred for life.
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88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The lack of family friendliness does not diminish what del Toro has achieved with this magical motion picture.
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88
USA Today Claudia Puig
Pan's Labyrinth artfully fuses a war film with a family melodrama and a fairy tale. The result is visually stunning and emotionally shattering.
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80
New York Magazine David Edelstein
His palette here is deep-toned, with bottomless blacks and supersaturated oranges and blues--as if the Walt Disney of "Pinocchio" had collaborated with Goya.
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80
Newsweek David Ansen
Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.
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80
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
The performers are all good with Baquero poised and beautiful as Ofelia and Verdu vital and spirited as the rebellious Mercedes. Lopez gives an extraordinary performance as the bestial captain, an irredeemable villain to rank with Ralph Fiennes' Nazi in "Schindler's List."
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80
Variety Justin Chang
There's plenty of blood -- both literal and figurative -- coursing through the veins of Pan's Labyrinth, a richly imagined and exquisitely violent fantasy from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 884 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jake H. gave it a10:
Holy Shit! This movie kicked ass! The gory bloody parts are amazing and the fact that it's in a different langauge totally ROCKS!!

Mike N gave it a9:
Honestly, this film is simply confused. Del Toro should have choosen one story line or the other to be the center of the film and the other story to support and enrich it. As it stands, neither story seems real. That said, the imagery is unforgettable.

Hugo B. gave it a10:
Most beautiful, emotional and gripping movie I've ever seen. I was left feeling happy and sad all in one go.

Pedro M. gave it a10:
Excellent movie. Very entertaining, really a classic. It has lots of violence, but instead of insulting it is sad, and makes one aware that reality is more violent.

Baz L gave it a1:
Woeful plot. Good animation here and there but thats about all I can say that is good about this movie. Why is it that directors assume their audiences to be dumb and weave about unbelievable plots? Not only that but they give their characters 1/2 the IQ of an average person? God help us if Del Toro turns the Hobbit into another Pans labyrinth.

Shaanan C. gave it a10:
I absolutely loved this movie. From the elements of realism brought in by Del Toro's portray of the Spanish cvil war to the amazing fantasy world developed throughout the film. I can't see where the poor reviews are coming from.

Joe J. gave it a10:
Great movie all around, a must see.

Read more user comments...

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