MOVIE · 2001

The Devil's Backbone

DramaFantasyHorrorThriller108 min

Fernando Tielve is Carlos, a young boy sent to the Santa Lucía orphanage in Spain, 1939, as the Spanish Civil War grinds toward its end. Inside the isolated school, he finds uneasy friendships, a vicious bully, and an unexploded bomb planted in the courtyard, while a ghostly presence moves through the dormitories with revenge on its mind. Guillermo del Toro frames the orphanage as both refuge and trap, with Marisa Paredes and Federico Luppi among the adults overseeing a place shaped by war, secrecy, and the threat of violence from both the living and the dead.