BLADE 2-Regisseur Guillermo del Toro kehrte zu seinen Wurzeln zurück und schuf ein vielschichtigen Geisterfilm, der mit exquisiten Bildern verwöhnt. Das Horrordrama birst vor morbider Stimmung. Im namenlosen Niemandsland verwischen die Grenzen zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten. Wo die Wut des Kriegs symbolisch allgegenwärtig ist, fallen die Masken der Zivilisation und geben die Fratzen der niederen Instinkte frei: Habgier, Mord, Verrat und Betrug. Vor dem Hintergrund eines an Hemingways WEM DIE STUNDE SCHLÄGT und Manns ZAUBERBERG gemahnenden Alptraum-Ortes, erzählt del Toro nicht nur von einer Kindheit im Krieg, sondern dringt metaphorisch in politische und gesellschaftliche Dimensionen einer explosiven Zeit vor. Dabei versinnbildlicht die Geistergeschichte eine traurigschöne, eindringliche und faszinierende Moritat, die düster verkündet: “many of you will die.”
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Maverick director Guillermo del Toro (CRONOS, MIMIC, BLADE 2) made a supreme u-turn to his gloomy roots by diving into a seductive and mesmerizing ghost tragedy during the Spanish civil war. When a ten-year-old boy is pushed off to an orphanage in the middle of nowhere, he discovers a spirit seeking revenge from beyond. After three years of war the fascist Franco army claims victory over the left-wing republican partisans in a land left with poverty and living dead, defenceless and isolated. THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE is like an insect trapped in amber, a mournful and beautiful elegy, which sings of humans are more dangerous than ghosts.

“An elegant scare picture with elements of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and LOS OLVIDADOS.” The New York Times

“A superior work! It is one of the absolute best movies you’ll see this year!” Ain’t It Cool News
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Shortly after his arrival at Santa Lucia, an isolated school that shelters orphans and abandoned children during the Spanish Civil War, 10-year-old Carlos spies a ghost.

It is a fleeting figure, ethereal and sad. Before Carlos can follow it into the dark cellar below the school's kitchen, another boy calls him away.
Thus begins Mexican filmmaker Guil-lermo del Toro's mournful, scary and multilayered horror film The Devil's Backbone.

Carlos hears voices on the wind at night, and the pitter-patter of bare feet around his bed. Could it be that the ghost of Santi, the vanished boy in whose bed Carlos sleeps, haunts the compound? Santi disappeared on the day a bomb fell -- but did not explode -- into the school courtyard. It's still there, a monument to war. Teachers surmised that Santi grew frightened and ran away. The truth, however, is far more terrible.

This wonderfully acted film bears no similarity to the shallow, campy fright fests most American horror movies have become. Rather, like The Others, it is a carefully wrought, atmospheric tale that takes its ghosts seriously and treats its audience with respect.

But while The Others primarily aimed to play with our expectations (while at the same time fully exploiting the ability of haunted-house stories to frighten us), The Devil's Backbone is socially engaged. Nearly all the action takes place near or on the grounds of the school, but its story can be seen as an allegory for war-torn Spain.

The primary bad guy isn't the ghost but the school's caretaker, Jacinto (played by Eduardo Noriega, who starred in Open Your Eyes, the source for Tom Cruise's Vanilla Sky). An orphan who grew up at the school and harbors raging resentments, Jacinto has been trying to get into the school's safe to steal the gold that's stored there. Jacinto steals the keys from the headmistress, Carmen (Marisa Paredes, who was in All About My Mother and Life Is Beautiful), with whom he is having a loveless affair. The school's poetry-quoting doctor, Casares (Federico Luppi), loves Carmen but only from afar.

Carlos, at first, is bullied by one of the other boys, Jaime. Eventually, however, the boys bond. This is a good thing because only by standing together and fighting can they hope to survive the ordeal Jacinto subjects them to late in the film when his intentions and fury are unleashed.

It hardly seems just to call this a horror film because it is so much more. While Jacinto and the ghost haunt the school and torment its inhabitants from within, the war that rages outside the walls threatens to engulf Santa Lucia.
Though not a long movie, it is filled with incident. The characterizations are so rich and the texture so varied that it almost feels like a compressed novel, but the film is based on an original screenplay. It is engrossing from the first to its final, moving scene. Grade: A" Houston Chronicle
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España, finales de los años 30, Carlos, un niño de 12 años, es abandonado por su tutor en el orfanato Santa Lucía; una construcción imponente aislada en medio de un páramo desolado. El colegio esconde, a lo largo de sus lóbregos pasillos, una serie de relaciones viciadas entre los adultos que viven allí; principalmente entre el cuarteto protagonista compuesto por Carmen (la directora), Casares (un maduro professor), Jacinto (el agresivo portero) y Conchita (una joven maestra). Pronto surgirá una violenta rivalidad entre Carlos y Jaime, un adolescente de carácter tortuoso y hostil que ejerce de líder natural para el resto de los alumnos. Inmerso en este universo cerrado cuyas normas desconoce y rodeado de muchachos abandonados o sin familia, Carlos irá vislumbrando poco a poce el trágico secreto que permanece grabado en sus muros. Desde su primer día en Santa Lucía, ante los aterrorizados ojos de Carlos comenzará a aparecer, una y otra vez, la imagen de un niño cadavérico que tratará persistentemente de comunicarse con él. Carlos no tardará mucho en sospechar que este susurrante espectro infantil de intenciones nada claras es, en realidad, el fantasma de un antiguo alumno Ilamado Santi, desaparecido hace tiempo en circunstancias misteriosas. Sediento de venganza, el espíritu de Santi utilizará al nuevo interno para saldar la sangrienta deuda pendiente con su asesino; una venganza que se cumplirá finalmente de forma cruel, terrible e inesperada.
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