The Devil's Backbone (2001)

In 1939, the end of the violent and bloody Spanish Civil War a ten year old boy, Carlos, is abandoned by his tutor at an orphanage in the middle of nowhere. The orphanage is run by a doctor and his wife, both of whom are strict but kind and want the best for all the boys as well as the cold caretaker Jacinto and Conchita the maid. Carlos is bullied by an older boy and eventually overcomes this, although he never feels comfortable at the orphanage especially not in bed number 12, where the other children say a boy who went missing slept.After an encounter with Jacinto and a series of unexplained events, the courage of all will be tested.

I enjoyed the film as I thought it was engaging and fast paced and that Del Torro did a good job of making us care about the character of Carlos right from the beginning, which meant that I was interested in the plot. A feature I enjoyed was the tints of colour to differentiate the supernatural from the mundane, the realistic scenes had an orange tint whereas the supernatural had a blue tint, this makes the ghost look more sinister as it looks colder and makes the reality look more comforting although this is deceptive since the person who actually causes the most harm and destruction is not the monster at all, but a human. This could be Del Torro's way of suggesting that although we fear monsters and ghosts, the real monsters are ourselves. The most dramatic part of the film was when Jacinto blew up the orphanage and most of the children died, this made me uncomfortable in a harrowing way as I realized this is the reality for many people in third world countries such as Egypt at the moment, hundreds of people killed at once. The scene when Carlos is hiding from Jacinto is also quite stress inducing and adds to the tension built up in the film.

I would recommend this film to people who like action films as it does have that aspect to it and there are some nail biting moments too, so perhaps also people who like thrillers.