Guillermo del Toro’s blockbuster provides plenty of spectacle, but the characters who inhabit it are, despite their Shakespearean airs, not vivid enough for you to care beyond the wow factor. But there is a wow factor.

In Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), the new film from Mexican-born director Guillermo del Toro, fairy tales are terrifying. This is how fairy tales are supposed to be: coded ways of telling children about the harsh realities of adult life. As the goal of American parenting has become shielding children from reality, as if it did not exist, fairy tales have in turn become been watered down and made less frightening. In the case…