About the only thing that CGI can’t do nowadays is create believable humans from scratch. But if you’ve got an actor there, providing the right facial expressions and so on, computers are capable of modifying that image in various ways.
Actually, we’re no better at making animals from scratch than we are humans, but we humans have an innate knack for recognizing each other, and noticing even the smallest details that are off, so the bar of “good enough” is higher for humans than for all other creatures.
What made me think the fantasies weren’t real is that the bug turned into a fairy that looked exactly like the fairy in Ofelia’s book, even assuming the same poster at first. That’s an odd coincidence if it’s supposed to be real… I suppose we could assume that the fantasy world is able to create itself from the imagination of the person who is supposed to see it.
I went to see the movie at the Movies and I curled up in a ball in the scene where Capitan beats that young man’s face in. I’m not squeamish for cartoon violence. Vut violence protrayed in real ways is the real horror. That scene horrified me. I haven’t been able to even attempt to watch it dispassionately on the DVD yet.
Did he mention the mandrake root? My reasons for believing the fantasy world was real were:
The chair in the Pale Man’s lair. I’m pretty sure it’s missing in the following scenes
The chalk
That the book tells Ofelia her mother is hemmorhaging before the door is opened
The mandrake root, which both her mother and the Captain handle
When Ofelia walks through the wall in the Labyrith, which shuts behind her, and the Captain doesn’t get through
I don’t remember him saying much about the mandrake root. He talked about the scene though, about Carmen’s rejection of the mandrake root, and of magic, how it contributed to her death.