Pan's Labyrinth

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.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A brilliant work of the imagination capable of truly seizing and igniting our fantasies.

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.

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."

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

A critic trots out the word "masterpiece" at his own peril, but there it is.

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Visually stunning, it meshes haunting images with a complex multilevel story about the enchantment of youth.

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Literally and figuratively marvelous, a rich, daring mix of fantasy and politics.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.

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.

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.

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.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Pan's Labyrinth is a transcendent work of art.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

This is the breakthrough work of one of world cinema's most visionary artists.

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.

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.

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?

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Del Toro presents one dazzling visual spectacle after another.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.

Empire Kim Newman

Dark, twisted and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

One of the greatest of all fantasy films.

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.

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.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

The action scenes are exciting, the fantasy scenes are creative and the war scenes are brutal.

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.

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The lack of family friendliness does not diminish what del Toro has achieved with this magical motion picture.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.