25th Anniversary!
The international breakthrough film from Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) comes one of the most haunting and deeply human ghost stories ever committed to film. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, The Devil’s Backbone remains a cornerstone of modern Gothic horror and an essential precursor to del Toro’s later masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth.
Set during the waning days of the Spanish Civil War, the film follows young Carlos, an orphan left in a remote Republican refuge after the death of his father. Amid hunger, cruelty, and the looming shadow of Franco’s victory, Carlos discovers that the orphanage harbors more than painful memories. Strange whispers echo through its corridors, and the spirit of a murdered child demands that long-buried truths be unearthed.
Inspired by Del Toro’s own childhood encounters with the supernatural and shepherded into production by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar on the strength of his first film Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone transformed the “ghost story” into something profoundly more emotional. Featuring unforgettable performances by Eduardo Noriega (Open Your Eyes), Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother), and Federico Luppi (Cronos), this atmospheric masterpiece announced Guillermo del Toro as one of cinema’s great visual storytellers.
2001, 106 minutes, Spain/Mexico, In Spanish with English Subtitles, Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Rated R
“del Toro, the child whose life was "transformed by monsters," who has devoted his career to exploring the inextricable relationship between pain and beauty, death and rebirth, damnation and salvation, and nowhere more poignantly than in the eerie enchantments of The Devil's Backbone.”
– Mark Kermode, THE CRITERION COLLECTION
“Mr. del Toro provokes your screams and shudders, but he also earns your tears.”
– A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“The movie is an expert, sunlit chiller audaciously predicated on an unquiet historical memory: ‘What is a ghost?’”
– J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE
“A seductively corrosive horror story that also potently suggests the ways war can shatter childhood.”
– Jay Carr, THE BOSTON GLOBE
“Del Toro transcends the meta-archetypes that dominate his work, forging something truly and terrifyingly human. The film is a drama first, and an essay on myths and history second.”
– Chuck Bowen, SLANT
