Pale Man Returns: Del Toro Never Needed the Third Dimension
Pan's Labyrinth turns twenty this year, and rather than let the anniversary pass as a footnote in someone's retrospective listicle, del Toro is doing the thing that only works when the original material is genuinely untouchable: bringing it back to theatres, in 3D and 4K, daring you to sit across the dinner table from the Pale Man one more time.
There is a version of cinema that asks you to feel safe — that builds its worlds in clean lines, legible metaphors, heroes you can follow home. And then there is Guillermo del Toro, who has spent his entire career building the other kind.
*Pan's Labyrinth* turns twenty this year, and rather than let the anniversary pass as a footnote in someone's retrospective listicle, del Toro is doing the thing that only works when the original material is genuinely untouchable: bringing it back to theatres, in 3D and 4K, daring you to sit across the dinner table from the Pale Man one more time. The trailer dropped and it is, predictably, everything — Ofelia's underworld rendered in that specific del Toro palette that sits somewhere between a bruise and a jewel, the faun curling his fingers around a promise that costs more than it reveals. The film won three Oscars in 2007 and it deserved more. The argument that it should have taken the Best Picture over *The Departed* is one I have made in too many conversations and I will make it again here.
The 3D question is fair, though. Del Toro's visual grammar is already so precisely layered — depth constructed through production design, not gimmick — that the conversion risk is real. What saves it is the 4K restoration, which matters more than the dimensionality. Seeing this film the way it was meant to be seen, in a dark room with strangers breathing too loud, is the point. The format is just the excuse.
Elsewhere in the ecosystem: Ayo Edebiri's 2025 thriller is apparently climbing HBO Max charts on the strength of *The Bear*'s final season, which is a very clean demonstration of how television stardom works now. You make people care about a character, they follow the actor home. It's parasocial loyalty with better taste. The thriller itself was genuinely overlooked on release — Edebiri is doing something precise and uncomfortable in it — and it deserves the second look the algorithm is finally giving it.
And then there is the *Possession* remake. Paul Dano, Callum Turner, Margaret Qualley, directed by the *Smile* director. Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 original is one of the most formally unhinged films ever made — Isabelle Adjani won Cannes for it while appearing to have a complete psychological breakdown onscreen, which is either the greatest performance of the decade or proof that some films simply cannot be remade without the original chaos that produced them.
The verdict on that one writes itself: some doors are better left closed, and the Pale Man already has the franchise covered.
