Laura’s place

Tonight we watched Pan’s Labyrinth. I have to say…it was the freakiest, creepiest movie I have ever seen. The acting is really good. Even the little girl, who can’t be more than twelve years old, is a really good actress. Out of all the main characters, only one and a half are still alive at the end. If you see the movie, you’d understand what I meant by “one and a half.”

Halfway through the movie we had to stop because Lilly was getting scared. It was good we stopped there because it only began getting scary after that. But before I go on you have to understand my definition of “scary.” I do not watch horror movies, in books I cry when the antagonist dies violently, I thought Sweeney Todd was pretty scary, Twilight made me jump. Get it? Got it? Good. Moving on.

After a short break my dad and I continued to watch it. I, who was previously on the floor, got comfortable on the couch with a slice of juicy blackberry and strawberry pie. When we got to the infamous part where Ofelia eats the grape and the white guy (and I don’t mean that racistly, I mean it literally) with eyes on his hands gets up, beheads the two fairies in his mouth, and comes after her like a zombie (groaning and moaning and stumbling), I forgot to eat it. I only remembered to eat the pie after he caught her too and bit her head off (just kidding. She can’t have died that early in the movie). Seriously, I only remembered to eat after she returned to her own room after escaping by the skin of her teeth. Even then, I couldn’t get the sight of the zombie (let’s call him zombie, shall we? He sure looked like one) with the reddish-blue fairy blood dripping down his chin out of my head. The juice from the pie looked an awful lot like blood at that moment.

I had been gripping a pillow to my chest the rest of the movie. I’m surprised my newly cut fingernails didn’t break through the fabric and spill the fluffy pillow stuffing out. I suppose if they were any longer they would have. I was clutching that pillow as if it were my life. I was barely aware of it, but I remember most of the time my mouth was hanging open and my eyes were wide and glued to the screen. As if I couldn’t get enough of all the death and blood and gore. During the more suspensful parts I would tremble, such as when Mercedes, after almost fatally wounding that evil animal of an army captain, was surrounded by soldiers on horses and she was holding her knife to her throat and threatening to kill herself, knowing the captain wanted her back alive, probably so he could torture the living daylights out of her. Maybe break her nose and shove it into her brain with a hammer like he did to the son of the farmer who was hunting rabbits earlier in the movie. I’m not telling you what happens to her.

I’m not a person who enjoys violent movies. I mean…I like violent movies, but a certain type of violence. I hate guns (in real life, or in movies) and I hate bombs. The type of violence I like (in movies and ONLY in movies. Any violence in real life is horrific and unacceptable and should be abhored no matter what kind of violence it is) is with swords, bows and arrows, knights in armor on horseback, orcs riding the wolves of Isengard, the Ring Wraiths on their Nazgul, Ring of Power…etc. Usually those movies have fantasy creatures like elves, dwarves, fairies, and so on. Pan’s Labyrinth had those too (not very many, but some) but it also had lots, and lots, and lots of gun violence and the type of violence I hate in movies. However, with the fauns and fairies, I didn’t mind it as much. So, while it will never be my favorite movie, I enjoyed it. I just wish it had more of the magic and magical beings and things like those.

I first heard about this movie from a friend of mine in fifth grade. My friend, Andrew, told me it was a very good movie. He told me a lot about how the zombie had eyes on his hands and the toad under the tree and the “acid chalk,” mostly because I never thought I’d ever see the movie. It sounded too scary. I know what you’re thinking. If a little fifth grader can think this movie’s really good and not get scared, it can’t be too scary, can it? Wrong. If you knew my friend Andrew, you’d think twice before going to watch any movie he recommended. He described to us in great detail Darkness Falls, which he saw when he was five years old. He thinks The Ring is funny (not The Lord of the Rings, just The Ring).

So anyone who’s seen Pan’s Labyrinth and thought it wasn’t very scary, you know what an inexposed wimp I am. For those of you who are inexposed wimps like me, get your thickest pillows ready for when you do see it and don’t watch it while eating blackberry and strawberry pie.