If there is a lesson in the dark fairy tales and supernatural horrors of Guillermo Del Toro's films, it is this: The haunting shadow worlds of imagination and nightmares pale next to the evil of the real world.

His vivid "Pan's Labyrinth" is an elemental wonderland into which our Alice, here an imaginative young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) in 1944 Spain, escapes when she moves into the country estate with her ailing pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil). Ofelia is at once wide-eyed and wise and Baquero, a strikingly photogenic child, invests her with innocence, strength, compassion and an instinctive wariness of her new stepfather, the cold Capt.Vidal (Sergi López).

Ofelia sees magic all around her, in crickets that transform into fairies and a mythological faun (Doug Jones) that looks like an enchanted commingling of beast and forest, with vines and roots growing from fur and flesh. Jones (a mime by training) makes the faun an enigma with a body language that borders on threatening and Del Toro leaves his intentions ambiguous as he sends her on odysseys into the lairs of horrific monsters.

A far more brutal human war is waged above by the brutal Capt. Vidal, a cruel and callous officer in Francisco Franco's militia tasked with crushing the remnants of the anti-fascist rebellion. Sergi Lopez has made a career of playing human monsters that hide their callous indifference under his hard handsomeness.Here he is more terrifying than any mythological creature.

Yet Del Toro finds warmth and wonder amidst the brutality, especially from the housekeeper (Maribel Verdú) who adopts and protects the girl while leading a dangerous double life, and an ancient comfort in the primal, fantasy visions that are hewn from the earth and grown from enchanted wood and flora.

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.