Pan's Labyrinth a Guillermo del Toro fairy tale. Set against the backdrop of the bloody, cruel Spanish civil war, featuring graphic torture, amputations, pregnancy complications and terrifying monsters (both fabulist and human), it's a movie certain to permanenty damage any child that accidentally sees it.
Young Ofelia is taken with her very pregnant mother to a chalet in the mountains, where her step father, a brutal captain is waging war against gurellias in the nearby woods. There she discovers an ancient labyrinth, and the faun that dwells at its centre. The faun, claiming that she may be the long lost princess of a magical world, assigns her tasks to prove her worth. Meanwhile, in the profane world, her step father cares more about his potential heir than the woman that's carrying him, rebels work amongst the household staff and Ofelia must balance the demands of pleasing her mother and fufilling the faun's tasks.
The faun's motives are far from unambiguous, and there are hints that he, too is more interested in Ofelia's half brother than her. (Oh noes! Are the pretend monsters and the real ones somehow related? Do the horrors of war somehow becomes fairy tale horrors in a childs mind?!!!)