Pan's Labyrinth/Tear Jerker

• The ending is supposedly happy, with Ofelia being reunited with her real parents (the rulers of the underworld)... by dying. Mercedes holding her dead body while singing a lullaby is just icing on the tearcakes.
  • Of course, it could be worse, since there's another way to interpret the ending. No one but Ofelia ever saw any of the magic, so it could be that she made the whole thing up in her head to deal with her horrible situation, and the "reuniting" is just her final, dying hallucination. But that puts the whole thing squarely in Downer Ending territory.
  • Word of God, thank heavens, officially denies the "All Just a Dream" interpretation, and says that everything in the film is real, including the last scene.
• Let's be honest here - just hearing the Leitmotif of the hummed nursery rhyme is enough to get a person who's seen the movie teary-eyed.