An elegant and richly layered ghost story in which the creepiest ghosts haven't quite figured out that they're already dead. The Devil's Backbone is a horror story of the first order, densely textured and elaborately imagined, in which the most resonant horrors turn out to be not just of a supernatural nature (although they're in there as well), but also psychological and social — greed, murder, betrayal and a whole gamut of human ills associated with the plague of war.
The film takes place during the final chaotic days of the Spanish Civil War, and, although virtually the entire film is set in a desolate, isolated orphanage in the middle of nowhere, the presence of the war is everywhere. The orphans are children of dead rebels, and the adult administrators all wear their politics on their sleeves —even as they indulge themselves in secret passions and unsavory longings that would be right at home in a vintage Mexican melodrama. At moments, the film even reminds us of a cinematic slice from Spain's undisputed master of the gleefully perverse, the late, great Luis Bunuel.
Lest it get overlooked with all the political allegory, high-minded cinematic references and Gothic textures in which the movie swims, there's also a bona fide, creepy-crawly, ghost's ghost lurking about too, and that's where the story really gets interesting. Rich with luxuriously eerie atmosphere, and filled with striking imagery that recalls the chiaroscuro Euro-horrors of Mario Bava as well as the sun-dappled glory days of Spaghetti Westerns, The Devil's Backbone is a prime example of the classy new wave of thinking person's horror films bubbling up from south of the border. The film's writer/director is Guillermo Del Toro, the talented Mexican-born filmmaker whose previous movies (the marvelous 1992 vampire tale Cronos, the underrated Mimic and even Blade II) display a unique understanding and profound affection not just for the nuances of cinema's history, but, specifically, for the horror genre.
Columbia TriStar's new DVD edition of The Devil's Backbone gives Del Toro plenty of opportunities to expand on what is certainly his best and his most personal effort ever. The Devil's Backbone is clearly a horror movie, but it's also much more, and Del Toro discusses all of this at length on the amusing and insightful commentary track included on the DVD. Additional features include a better-than-average making-of documentary and a feature that allows us to compare Del Toro's storyboards (which are just as wonderful as you'd expect from a comic book aficionado) with the finished scenes. The widescreen image quality on the DVD is rarely less than stunning, perfectly communicating the film's rich palette of browns and golds and frequently giving us the impression we're viewing the world from inside a cask of fine old Spanish brandy. Scheduled for release June 25.
—Lance Goldenberg
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2002.