Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

cinemajesty Film Review: "The Devil's Backbone" (2001)After misfortunes of critical mixed to falsely-recieved as overly-written science-fiction-horror movie "Mimic" directed by Guillermo del Toro with intitial encounter of a Hollywood-based 30-Million-Dollar budget, the director took nearly four years of rebounding absence from actual directing before finding a emotionally difficult to enter story of children in far-out desert-sand-inhabited orphanage of ghastly rememberance of child murder put to hands-on revenge, an active Spanish civil-war bomb in the courtyard and several somehow apart inhabitants of this off-world-feel-striking environment by capable production designer César Macarrón of nowhere alongside the children building a unit to confront the nemesis character of faschist-methods-indulging Jacinto, performed by no-relief-from-the-menace sharing in Spanish-reagion-well-known actor Eduardo Noriega, when Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar's independent as from Madrid-operating production company "El Deseo" provides the visionary director with centralized production values of visually-striking as pin-needle-sharp sound design in favors for exceptionally-astray motion picture, which by the end just does not want together to be a whole war-horror-drama-experience with pseudo-indulging civil-war ingredients received as microcosm to let the conclusion come to path that "The Devil's Backbone" remains the visual calling card for director Guillermo del Toro, who eventually delivers with a fulminate as the directorial vision suited "Hellboy" comic-book adaptation of season 2003/2004 to further much more rounded Civil-war traumatic motion picture visions with "Pan's Labyrinth" in Fall 2006.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

SnoopyStyle The Republicans are losing the Spanish Civil War to General Franco and the right-wing Nationalists. Carlos is sent to an isolated orphanage run by Republican sympathizers one-legged Carmen and Dr. Casares who are hiding a cache of Republican gold. He hasn't been told that his father was killed on the frontlines. Dr. Casares sells his spiced rum "limbo water" to the villagers from a glass jar containing a baby with an exposed spine or the Devil's Backbone. Carlos encounters the ghost of Santi, a boy who disappeared when a giant bomb landed in the middle of the courtyard. The bomb is suppose to have been defused. Carlos is bullied by Jaime and the other boys. Carlos rescues Jaime from drowning and they become friends. Angry groundskeeper Jacinto was once one of the orphans being cared for and Conchita is the beautiful teacher.Carlos has a childhood innocence and this is an intriguing childhood ghost story from Guillermo del Toro. This is not scary but it has the tension of the Spanish Civil War like his later masterpiece "Pan's Labyrinth". It has a mood of dread and feel of wonder. The characters are all compelling. It would be nice to have Carlos and Jaime battle it out a little longer. It's all very well made.

davidhung I read the glowing reviews before deciding to see this film and was disappointed. While technically and cinematically well made, with many long close-up of faces and expressions under yellowish tint throughout the orphanage, and while it offers the occasional humor, the plot is thin - a boy murdered by the villain the caretaker because he accidentally discovered the villain was trying to steal gold, turned into a ghost and finally got his revenge. Yes it is not meant to scare but make you sympathize with the ghost. But so what? The movie has too many characters to delineate and they are delineated very slowly - the always stressed headmaster and her doctor/husband, the unbelievably brave 12-year-old hero, his rival the older orphan, the villain, the villain's girlfriend, etc. It tries to cover too many characters but ends up leaving each undeveloped or illogical. Why is the hero so brave and inquisitive having been suddenly abandoned in an orphanage? Are the headmistress and her husband in it for money, kindness, political correctness? Why would a worker whom we hardly met and then the headmistress be so silly to run towards the burning and exploding cans of gasoline to just be killed? Why was the villain's girlfriend so enamored by him and was going to marry him and suddenly became a martyr to die just to defy him? Are the boys happy and adjusted as it seems all they cared about was pranks and nobody seemed to care about the missing Santi boy who was rumored to become a ghost. Without character development, one never really identifies with the characters and get too involved with their curiosity, fear, cruelty, and agony. And the movie feels long. The director should be congratulated for not using artificial devices to just scare you, until that one sudden gunshot, which was louder than a canon!

tao902 The Spanish Civil War is coming to an end and Carlos is placed in an orphanage after his father died in battle fighting for the Republicans.Carlos finds it difficult to feel comfortable in his new home, partly due to unpleasant characters within the orphanage and his new school but also because of the presence of a ghost known as Santi. A ghost haunts the inhabitants, bringing chaos and seeking revenge on its killer.Great cinematography and good plot but the storyline is poorly told by the film. It is difficult to care about or believe in any of the characters and some of the events don't fit smoothly into the overall narrative.