Acute little girl wandering in an imaginary realm filled with fantastic creatures: This is the scenario for "Pan's Labyrinth," and while it may sound much like "Alice in Wonderland," director Guillermo del Toro's world is an altogether darker place.

If "Pan's Labyrinth" has a precedent, it would be Terry Gilliam's equally visionary "Brazil." Both films posit dreams, imagination, even hallucination as the only sane response to the enveloping, gray death-grip of fascism. It also echoes Gilliam's more recent "Tideland," both in its choice of a preteen girl as protagonist and in the sense that she is in grave peril, from an onrushing darkness that her daydreaming can barely keep at bay.

Gilliam has been one-of-a-kind for several decades now, so it's good to see he's got some company. Del Toro's intriguing career started in Mexico with the eerie 1993 vampire flick "Chronos," which he followed up with the chilling Spanish Civil War tale "The Devil's Backbone," before going Hollywood with "Blade 2" and "Hellboy." Unlike many promising non-American directors who get swallowed whole by the system, del Toro has maintained the admirable principle of only working on what interests him. (He's based in Spain now, after his family was targeted by kidnappers in Mexico in 1997.)