rated R

By the two-minute mark of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” when we first meet the young Ofelia (played with confidence and poise by 12-year-old Ivana Baquero), clutching her book of fairy tales on her way to meet her evil stepfather, it’s clear that there’s remarkable fablecraft at work here.

Of the craftsman, Mexican born writer-director Guillermo Del Toro, it can be said that he has a track record of repeatedly squandering his notable talents, grinding off big meaty hunks of Hollywood gristle, and cashing the checks. “Hellboy”? Please.

“Blade II”? Yikes. “Mimic”? I’m sorry I brought it up. Whorish as these safaris into the dark heart of the big studio system may seem, however, it bears noting that he takes all that cash and runs back to Mexico to make his own movies, pursuing his own visions, in his primary language, free from studio intervention.

Turns out, despite his association with a few bloated Hollywood comic/action pictures, Del Toro happens to be a visionary storyteller of the highest degree, and his more personal projects are uniformly spectacular.

His first film, “Chronos” (1993), could actually be called a vampire picture. Which is cool enough in itself, but the work was such a thoughtful, thorough reworking of the genre as to render it nearly unrecognizable. It’s really fantastic. As for “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001), there are scenes in that movie that left me shaken, haunted and, frankly, with nightmares that persist to this day.

And then comes “Pan’s Labyrinth.” An elaborate re-weaving of classic Grimm themes with a particularly evolved sense for the blithe, judgementlessness of child-logic, it finds our heroine at the edge of womanhood, facing the harsh, bewildering, and sometimes bloody realities of the human condition.

When she’s alone, her world is populated by all the fauns, fairies and frogs (and murderous baby-stealing bastards) one might expect from a Narnia-inclined young lady, but Narnia this isn’t. Set alternately amid the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the lush, dark recesses of Ofelia’s fairy-fed imagination, the story belongs as much to her evil stepfather as it does to her. The tyrannical Captain Vidal, made painfully human by the impression that he is being driven to his fate by his own personal set of demons and played with a sinister, razorsteel resolve by Sergei Lopez, just may be one of the greatest villains ever written for the screen.

As the parallel paths of her myths and his realities begin to knit, it becomes clear that even in the “real” world, everybody’s in the labyrinth, picking their way though lives surrounded on all sides with sharp bends, blind alleys, switchbacks, turnarounds and dead ends. There’s a palpable sense of deliberation and consequence that underscores the even the smallest choices the characters make, the tiniest actions they take. Each one is another turn in the maze of their respective destinies. She’s taking the knife. He’s helping the rebels. She’s eating the grape. He’s not slitting his own throat. In this state, the simple act of shaving in a mirror renders as an image of gravitas, portent and dread. Oh my.

Fanboy Note: Doug Jones, the skinniest mime in all the land, who performed the bodywork in “Hellboy” for slippery, slightly effeminate ichthiosapien, Abe, returns. Again under a hundred layers of latex and makeup, portraying both the shadowy, multiplicitous faun Pan and, more hideously, the shambling, ravenous, baby-munching Pale Man, a Del Toro Original Monster and quite possibly one of the most abominable, grotesque, id-driven fiends in all of human myth. Thanks, Guillermo… again, with the nightmares....

Del Toro has said that each movie he does is just practice for his next movie, and there are some apparent cues here taken from his previous works. The portrait “Pan” creates of alienated youth surrounded by civil strife is a clear evolution of the themes he started describing with “Devil’s Backbone.” The core of his usual visual effects team is obviously at work again, too, and the depth and texture of his production design continues to stun. As his body of work grows, his films seem to be developing what I think they call in the industry “a personality.” Much as works by Terry Gilliam and Dave McKean have something of a stamp, and are immediately recognizable, so will prove these moderately budgeted, homegrown indies of Del Toro. He’s got “Hellboy II” next to do and then the third in his “Spanish Civil War” series, “3993.” And he’s rumored to have been developing an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Mountains of Madness” for some time. Wow. Whatever he does, I just can’t wait to see what “Pan’s Labyrinth” was practice for. As the Pale Man says: I’ll keep my eyes out.