This is a serious adult fairy tale, in that it is a fairy tale, but for adults. In that, there’s some kinda hardcore violences splashed in amongst the fairy-telling as it plays out as a period piece. It’s not a real surprise, given del Toro’s history of dark mythologies with Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone, and the Mignola-written Hellboy previous to this, with Hellboybeing the only non-R rated film. The rest are all dark and pretty violent in tone. This one, despite the main role by little girl Ofelia, is no exception.
España, 1944. That’s Spain, apparently. Young girl Ofelia and her pregnant mom are going up into the mountains to a Mill retreat for the birthing, Captain Asshole meeting them there and watching over them while fighting the those damn Anti-Franco resistance fighters despite the end of the latest civil war. There might be a heavy dose of Frascisms involved. That’s Honey Frash dictated on a lot of people that may or may not like that. Ultimately it means, you get what we give you, shut up or your Frashist. Or something like that, the ill-logics all seem very familiar though. In the meantime, little Ofelia is just trying to look out for her mom and little unborn baby brother while the last of her childhood plays out, retreating into her books full of fairy tales instead of facing the grim realities around her. There’s a lot of darkness going on, on multiple levels here.
This is a pretty hard niche to fill, but del Toro does it with great style. In true Brothers Grimm fashion of taking essentially very dark folklore kind of stories and not Disneyfying them. This one is pretty brutal at times, but beautifully shot, it looks amazing. The creatures are suitably nightmarish, with Doug Jones does a great job with the practical ones. Some of the creature CGI-ness is okay, nothing to sneeze at, but there’s some animatronics involved too apparently. But mostly practical, and cool locations for the story. It’s not one to lightly walk into though. And leaves you with a decision at the end, how light or dark is your path? That’s up for you to choose.
