Pan's Labyrinth.

I've wanted to watch this even before it was scheduled to be released in Singapore. Saw a review about this in a foreign film magazine like ages ago. Was intrigued by the fairytale pretext of the story and the weird -to say the least- monsters shown. But I didn't watch it in the movies. Instead during the 4 hour break on Wednesday, due to absence of BMic lab, Linn and me watched Pan's Labyrinth instead at the library. I had always thought that the story would be more "happy-ending" fairytale than a dark one. Though, I never did disillusion myself into thinking that this was a Barbie-mild thing. What I expected was WAY different from what I saw.

There's enough violence and gore in this to freak me out a little. I didn't expect this sort of thing. But the make-up and settings were spectacular. The story also held me in it grip, taking twists and turns that I had never believed would happen in the film, if you ask me. But it also gave a very realistic, human quality to the film. No happy, expected ending, which I would feel happy with but not content. You know, the feeling where you knew it would end this way and it did. The story made it such that you were never sure about the whole thing in the first place. In the last scene, she was seen by her stepdad as talking to herself, when she was supposed to be talking to the faun. Was she crazy or did she really see another world that no one else can? And in that death, did she find the true happiness back with her loved ones? Or was that a disillusionment of death? You decide.