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Pan's Labyrinth

Universal acclaim
Based on 37 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 1013 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Fantasy | Foreign | Horror | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Guillermo del Toro
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 29, 2006
DVD: May 15, 2007
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: Mexico / Spain / USA
Language(s): Spanish (with English subtitles)
Summary
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.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Blade II Cronos Hellboy Hellboy II: The Golden Army Mimic The Devil's Backbone
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
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...
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.
Read Full Review >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.
The New York Times A.O. Scott
A swift and accessible entertainment, blunt in its power and exquisite in its effects.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Literally and figuratively marvelous, a rich, daring mix of fantasy and politics.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
This is the breakthrough work of one of world cinema's most visionary artists.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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?
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Del Toro presents one dazzling visual spectacle after another.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.
Read Full Review >Empire Kim Newman
Dark, twisted and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Don R. Lewis
The action scenes are exciting, the fantasy scenes are creative and the war scenes are brutal.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The lack of family friendliness does not diminish what del Toro has achieved with this magical motion picture.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 1013 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Roger E gave it a10:
One of the greatest of all fantasy films.
Aditya A gave it a6:
I think this movie is overrated, the ending was good but the plot was bit boring & violent for me.
joe q gave it an8:
Um, liz S, you just picked the two people who rated below you to comment on, you didn't even read most of the reviews. Also, saying, the movie is perfect doesn't provide any sort of insight or details as to why the film is so great, so I'd have to say you're the one who is being "simply ridiculous". I though the film was good movie, and be a big Guillermo del Toro fan certainly doesn't hurt. I though it was creative enough, but also a little excessive at points.
Bill L gave it a10:
Flawless masterpiece. Unforgettable.
Diana B gave it a10:
Really good story of the Spanish Civil War and its effect on a little girl.
Grant Z gave it a10:
Pans Labyrinth may seem simple at first,but scratch away at the above layers and it's as complex as a film can get. IAre the fairies and things the girl sees make-believe or real. Is it all in her mind, is she mad, or is everyone around her mad? Examine the story closely and it can be made more life-like. The fawn that tells the girl to steal the baby and do all this bad stuff could just be paedophile. She lives in a war torn area. So the monster with eyes in it's hands couldbe a blind person, who has been tortured to feel their way around. The film is deep, you have to think to get it and it's also beautifully haunting.
Brett K gave it a9:
Very good movie. Reminded me of a cross between Schindler's List and The Secret Garden.
