1 of the Best Fantasy Films Ever Made Is Now Streaming on Prime Video

Guillermo del Toro’s movies lean toward heavier themes; even his Pinocchio adaptation was more faithful to the grim version of the children’s story. Fans still consider his 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth his best contribution to the dark fantasy subgenre.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is now streaming on Prime Video. The film’s cult following has only grown over the years, fueled by overwhelming acclaim from critics. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of cinema’s all-time best dark fantasies, an eclectic subgenre highlighted by fan-favorites Spirited Away, Coraline, Dark Crystal, The Crow, and the bulk of Tim Burton’s movies. Del Toro described Pan’s Labyrinth as a parable influenced by traditional fairy tales, a dark spin on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia series. Set in 1944 Spain, the story of Pan’s Labyrinth revolves around its female protagonist’s fantastic adventures, juxtaposed with the real-world horrors of the Francoist regime.

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Del Toro confirmed Pan’s Labyrinth is a spiritual successor to The Devil’s Backbone, a gothic horror set in the Spanish Civil War’s final years. He asserted both films prove political commentary is best relayed through stories. “I think that parables have the chance to move you spiritually or emotionally and affect you emotionally,” he told Sci Fi Weekly in 2006. “I think The Devil’s Backbone was trying to say that anything pending, including the civil war, is a ghost, anything pending is a ghost… And Pan’s Labyrinth, when I go through the years of collecting fairy tales in their original form and original publication, I realized one of the themes that repeated itself over and over and over again was the theme of choice. Choice as a way of defining your destiny. And I thought this is a way to illuminate it.”

Pan’s Labyrinth Is A Companion Piece To Another Del Toro Movie

Del Toro told GamesRadar that Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone offer two viewpoints to the same story. “The idea for the movie was to create what I like to call a ‘mirror-movie’, to complement The Devil’s Backbone,” he asserted. “So hopefully one day you can screen them together and see a certain continuity: the way fantasy and reality intermingle; the way the story unfolds; structured the same so they can feel like companion pieces.“

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Pan’s Labyrinth was a box-office success, earning $83 million worldwide against a $19 million budget. The film garnered numerous awards including a Hugo and three Oscars. It currently has a fresh 95% critical score (and a solid 91% audience score) on Rotten Tomatoes, which describes the film as “Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable.” A sequel titled 3993 was published as a novel in 2019 after del Toro abandoned plans for a film treatment.

Pan’s Labyrinth is streaming on Prime Video.

Source: Prime Video

Pan’s Labyrinth

In the Falangist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

Director

Guillermo del Toro

Release Date

October 11, 2006

Studio

Warner Bros. Pictures

Cast

Ivana Baquero , Ariadna Gil , Sergi López , Maribel Verdú , Doug Jones

Runtime

1 hour 58 minutes

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