The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

20. 2006 - Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth
Universal

Honourable Mentions: Casino Royale, Children of Men, The Departed

A thematic and spiritual follow-up to his 2001 Spanish Civil War-set horror, The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth is the film Guillermo del Toro was born to make. Dark and fantastical, with a heavy sprinkling of the gothic romanticism that has become a defining feature of del Toro's work, Pan's Labyrinth is both the director's scariest and most technically impressive piece of cinema - an old-school fable that translates both the fear and fascination of childhood, only this time set in an unforgiving historical context (that being Francoist Spain).

Del Toro has proven to be a real champion for horror and fantasy - as well as other facets of genre filmmaking - but Pan's Labyrinth, needless to say, is a hard one to top.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.