10 Most Visually Stunning Horror Movies Ever

Pan's Labyrinth feels as much like a fairy tale as it does a horror film. As in Dr. Caligari, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro brilliantly plays with our sense of reality, contrasting light with dark, blue with yellow, and fantasy with reality.

Rarely does a scene appear to be completely illuminated; many indoor sequences take place at night with the characters casting shadows everywhere, and during the day, brief glimpses of sunlight just barely sneak into otherwise dingy locales. Navarro frequently only lights about half of an actor or about a third of the set. Color is also highly important, and Ofelia's universe feels far away from ours. Del Toro himself noted that the fantasy world was to feature warm colors, creating a "womblike" atmosphere, whereas the real world is mainly blue and green. Additionally, much sharper angles are used in reality in order to subconsciously make us think of it as less pleasant. Supposedly, Del Toro and Navarro color coded the entire movie during pre-production, allowing only a certain amount of colors to exist on screen.

As the movie progresses, though, that strict color coding begins to wear down and the two blend into one another, as Ofelia's world begins to seep into the real one. Though the film's characters might speak Spanish, Del Toro and Navarro realized that light and color are a universal language.