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The films of Guillermo del Toro have such distinct visuals that they are sometimes recognizable from just a single frame. And yet, not every visual element del Toro works into his films are 100% memorable... nor are they meant to be. In a recent fan Q&A, del Toro revealed that while working on the classic dark fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, some of the director's visual choices spoke more to the viewer's subconscious than anything else. 

The topic came up during a Reddit AMA del Toro did ahead of the 20th anniversary rerelease of the 2006 dark fantasy. one fan, a Redditor going by u/Jurassic_Nature, asked del Toro whether there were any details of the film he was "particularly proud of," that haven't been noticed by fans over the past two decades. 

"I have had many fights with production design and makeup effects throughout my 30 years," began The Shape of Water  creator, "And the things that I fight for that are contrarian, a lot of people don't notice consciously, but they notice in the way the movie impacts."

As an example, del Toro pointed to the design of the Pale Man's lair, the scene that introduced viewers to the most nightmarish creature in the film.

"I said all the walls and the floor in the Pale Man’s lair have to be blood red" the Frankenstein director recounted, "Now, this is apparently a big gesture, and we thought about it, and our production designer, said, 'This makes no sense.” And I said, “It will make sense visually. It will feel natural.' And most people don't notice a lot of little details in that room, like, most everything is a mouth, because it’s about voracity. Most of the doors are shaped like a mouth, the chimney is a mouth, the archways are mouths. The corridor is a mouth. These are things that people don't notice, but I'm proud about the way the real world and the magical world are designed so differently."

"In the way that 80% of our communication is nonverbal," del Toro opined, "I think 80% of a movie exists in a liminal layer beyond the conscious."

Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth returns to theaters for its 20th anniversary October 9.

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