The Devil's Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo) (2001)

If you were to ask me before 2004 what the name "the Devil's Backbone" meant to me, I would refer back to a segment from Unsolved Mysteries in the mid-90's, around 1995 or early 96, that profiled a supposedly haunted area in Central Texas. So, when I watched Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the first time and that title came up at #61, I thought they'd made a movie based on that area. But, as Guillermo del Toro and the other talking heads, like John Landis and Mark Kermode, discussed it, I instead learned it was a ghost story centered around children during the Spanish Civil War. And the actual moment they showed, when the protagonist, Carlos, encounters the ghost down in the creepy tunnels beneath the orphanage, was definitely eerie, especially when you saw what the ghost looked like up close. Like I said in my review of Cronos, this special and the Masters of Horror documentary were where I first truly learned who del Toro was, and I was just so taken with his elegant manner of speaking and how he described his thoughts behind The Devil's Backbone, such as, "History is, ultimately, an inventory of ghosts," and, "A spiritual experience is not always just the one that lifts you above. It's also the one that shows you fear. And fear is an incredibly useful feeling to have." So, not only was The Devil's Backbone was yet another movie from the special that I knew I had to check out one day, but I knew I needed to seek out del Toro's work in general. In the case of this film, that didn't happen until many years later, when I found the DVD at McKay's, and when I did see it, the way the story unfolded surprised me, as it was when I first began to realize how, in del Toro's work, the monsters are almost never the real threat; rather, it's actual people. Also, as per usual with him, it was very well done, with beautiful imagery juxtaposed with a real grimness and many ugly sights, great acting, and no sugarcoating of the story at all, despite the protagonists being kids.

Span, 1939. In the final days of the Spanish Civil War, Carlos, a young boy whose father, unbeknownst to him, died on the battlefield, is brought to the isolated Santa Lucia Orphanage, far out in the desert. Though the orphanage's headmistress and Republican loyalist, Carmen, is reluctant to take in another child, as they can barely support the ones they have, the two loyalists who brought him, one of whom is his tutor, leave him, feeling he'll be safer there. Though he's devastated by this, Carlos does manage to make a couple of friends in Galvez and Owl, the latter of whom doesn't speak, and the kindly Dr. Casares. He also runs afoul of Jaime, an older boy who bullies the others, and senses a strange presence from the moment he first arrives, one that visits him in the orphans' bedroom that night. When the room's two pitchers of water are dumped out, Jaime tells him to fetch some more from the kitchen, which is off-limits after curfew. Carlos agrees but gets Jaime to accompany him. The two of them sneak out and into the kitchen, but after Jaime fills his pitcher, he heads back inside, leaving Carlos alone. After nearly getting caught by the brutish, violent groundskeeper, Jacinto, Carlos feels the presence again and is drawn down into the basement area beneath the kitchen, which contains a cistern. He catches glimpses of a figure in the darkness and hears a disembodied voice whisper that many of them will die. Carlos escapes the building and tries to get back to the dormitory, but Jaime and one of the other orphans play a prank that causes him to get caught by Jacinto. However, he doesn't rat out who was in on it with him, and while Jaime threatens him with a knife when he catches him down by the cistern again, he saves his life when he gets knocked into the water, unable to swim. Jacinto catches them down there and threatens Carlos, cutting him across the cheek. After that, Jaime becomes an actual friend of Carlos'. Meanwhile, Carlos, having heard of someone the orphans call "the one who sighs," is told of Santi, a boy who disappeared around the time a bomb was dropped in the orphanage's courtyard but failed to detonate. Jaime becomes very irritable whenever the subject is brought up, and when Carlos looks through his sketchbook, he finds a drawing of a figure with a bleeding head wound with Santi's name as a label. It isn't long before Carlos begins encountering this apparition face-to-face, and as the ongoing war draws dangerously close to home, the secret behind his earthly demise will reveal the real monster among them.

Guillermo del Toro first wrote The Devil's Backbone back in the 1980's, when he was in college, but it got put away when he went on to direct his short films and then made his feature debut with Cronos. Following the really lousy experience he had making Mimic, he decided that, before he did another Hollywood movie, as he'd been offered Blade II in the interim and was interested, he needed to do something personal in order to re-energize himself. Thus, when producer Pedro Almodovar, who'd seen Cronos at a film festival and was very impressed, contacted del Toro about working with him and giving him complete freedom on whatever he decided to make, he decided to dust off The Devil's Backbone. He considerably rewrote it from its initial conception, going through a number of iterations before finally settling on the final one, and he drew from his own life experiences, such as going to a male Jesuit school (in the Masters of Horror documentary, he calls that the, "Equivalent to prison life in Mexico,"), and claiming to hear the voice of his recently deceased uncle when he was twelve. Del Toro has said doing this movie was just the experience he needed after Mimic, that getting it out of his system allowed him to make Blade II with an emphasis on just having fun, which comes through there.

In his audio commentary, del Toro describes young Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as a "force of innocence," and that is the best way to describe him. When he first arrives at the orphanage, while he's a bit apprehensive at first, when he sees the inert bomb stuck in the courtyard, he's fascinated rather than scared. He walks right up to it and knocks on its side, and as he waits for the men who brought him there to return from their meeting, he finds a slug and adds it to a small collection he has with him, including some comic books and toys. He also manages to make some friends right away, as well as an enemy when he gets picked on by the bullying Jaime. Carlos doesn't think he's there to stay, but finds he's badly mistaken when his tutor, Ayala, and his companion leave without him. Though he's devastated by this, he does find another friend in the place's doctor, Casares. Things get off to both a rough and creepy start for Carlos, as during his first night, he glimpses a figure behind the drape drawn next to his bed, only to pull it back and see no one there. An unseen force also knocks over two pitchers of water in the room, which Carlos is blamed for, and Jaime forces him to go down to the kitchen and get some more, despite it being off-limits after curfew. While left alone down there, Carlos is drawn down to the basement area, where he glimpses the figure again, as well as senses its presence, and hears a voice say, "Many of you will die." This sends him running out of the kitchen, only for some of the other boys to break the pitcher in his hands with slingshots, leading to him getting caught by Jacinto, the ruthless and violent caretaker. But the next morning, when Dr. Casares tries to make him reveal who his accomplices were, Carlos stays quiet (Casares, however, is able to determine who they are). This strengthens his bond with two of the orphans, Galvez and Owl, and though Jaime threatens him with a knife when he catches him down in the basement again, Carlos, after knocking him into the cistern, only to learn he can't swim, saves him from drowning. This ensures Jaime's friendship as well. However, Carlos also learns just how frightening Jacinto is when he catches them down there, as he cuts Carlos across the cheek with a knife and threatens to kill him if he says anything.

As he spends more time with the other boys, Carlos learns that the ghost, whom they call "the one who sighs," appeared after the bomb fell in the courtyard, and he also learns about Santi, the boy who disappeared the same day and whose bed he's now sleeping in. Looking through Jaime's sketchbook one night, he sees a drawing of a ghostly boy with the name "Santi" written next to it. Shortly afterward, he actually encounters the ghost and attempts to talk with him, asking him

how to prevent the deaths he says are coming. But Santi proves a little too scary for Carlos to deal with, and after a particularly frightening encounter with him, hides in a closet overnight. The next day, things go downhill for him and everyone else at the orphanage when, during an attempted evacuation, Jacinto, intent on getting his hands on the gold Casares and Carmen have stashed away for the resistance, causes an explosion that kills one of the teachers, many of the children, and mortally wounds both Casares and Carmen. In the

aftermath, Carlos learns the horrifying truth about Santi's death from Jaime, after which he no longer fears the ghost. In fact, when he encounters him again, he agrees to help him get revenge on the one who killed him: Jacinto.

At first, Jaime (Inigo Garces) comes off as just as a typical, mean-spirited bully, setting his sights on Carlos as soon as he arrives. He takes a comic book that Carlos was letting Owl read, mocks his privilege of having a tutor, dares him to take the comic back by shoving and slapping him, and when Carlos realizes he's being left there, Jaime yells, "Your tutor's leaving you, faggot!" That night, he causes him more grief by ordering him to go down to the kitchen to get some more water, calling him a "chickenshit" and a "queer" when he hesitates. Though he goes with him when Carlos accuses him of being scared, he leaves him there alone once he's filled his pitcher. On top of that, he and one of the other orphans slingshot Carlos' pitcher from the window, causing a loud noise that leads to Jacinto catching him. While Carlos doesn't rat the others out for it the next day, Jaime is still not so inclined to let him off the hook, especially when Casares figures out who was in on it anyway. When he finds Carlos in the basement area below the kitchen, he pulls a knife on him, only for Carlos to hit him with something that causes him to fall into the cistern. Fortunately for Jaime, Carlos jumps in and pulls him out when he's told he can't swim. Moreover, when Jacinto catches them, yells at them for being down there, and demands to know which one of them owns the discarded knife, Carlos, seeing how frightened Jaime is of him, takes the wrap. After that, Jaime is much more friendly towards Carlos, even agreeing to give back the comic he took from him. He also proves to be an aspiring artist, wanting to draw comic books as a career, and has a crush on Conchita, a lovely teacher who also happens to be Jacinto's lover. However, he becomes irritable and defensive whenever the orphans talk about the ghost, as well as Santi, and while looking through his sketchbook, Carlos finds a drawing proving they're one and the same. Eventually, Jaime reveals that he witnessed Santi's death at the hands of Jacinto, as well as that hesaw the bomb hit the courtyard immediately afterward. He admits he was too scared of Jacinto to say anything, and has carried the guilt ever since. But after Jacinto causes a lot more heartache for everyone at the orphanage, Jaime vows to kill him when he returns. Though he doesn't do it directly, he does encourage the boys to rise up when Jacinto and his men come back to search for the gold and imprison them, leading to his ultimate demise.

Among the other kids, the most notable ones are Galvez (Adrian Lamana), Owl (Javier Gonzalez Madrigal), and Marcos (Daniel Esparza). Galvez and Owl, or "Buho," who doesn't speak, are the first two kids Carlos truly meets upon arriving at the orphanage, befriending him and asking if he has any food. Though he has none, they become very interested in the comic books and toys he has on him, and unlike Jaime and Marcos, they opt not to screw him over when he's coming back from the

kitchen. All of them do get punished, as well as Carlos, but Galvez and Owl don't hold it against him, as Galvez knows how intelligent and crafty Dr. Casares is. Carlos then gives him a wind-up frog as a present. Unfortunately, they're both so intimidated by Jaime that they break down and tell him where Carlos is when he's looking for him. As for Marcos, he's little more than Jaime's crony, bullying Carlos just as much as he does, and restraining him so Jaime can have his way with him down in the basement. But, like Jaime himself,

he becomes friendlier towards Carlos after he saves him from drowning. Late in the film, Owl is badly injured in the explosion, leading Galvez to look after him, including when they're imprisoned, and though he agrees to slip out the window of the room they're locked in, he ends up falling in a bad way and badly spraining his ankle. Even though he's hobbling afterward as a result, he does manage to take part in the boys' ultimate revenge against Jacinto.

The two people who run the orphanage, Argentinian-born Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi) and Carmen (Marisa Paredes), are staunch supporters of the Republican loyalists, to the point where they're stashing away a lot of gold for their treasury. However, the death of Carmen's husband and Casares' friend, Ricardo, has left her embittered, as she feels he was too much of a thinker rather than a fighter, and left her behind to defend his ideals alone. Not helping her attitude is the artificial leg she has to wear in place of her right one, which she says is sometimes painful to the point of being unbearable. When her comrades, Ayala and Dominguez, first bring Carlos to the orphanage, she refuses to take him in, as they can barely provide for the boys they already have. She also tries to relinquish herself of the burden of keeping the gold, trying to make them take it with them, but they refuse, as they're about to cross enemy lines. When they forcibly leave Carlos behind, the warmer and more approachable Casares takes him under his wing, giving him the nickname "Carlitos" and acting as a father figure for him. In general, he proves to be much more upbeat and enthusiastic than the dour Carmen, as seen when he's happily reciting a soliloquy while getting dressed in the morning. While Carmen is sure the Nationalists will win the war, Casares believes England or France may intervene on their behalf. He's also more amused than angry when Carlos manages to get in trouble twice within his first day there, and proves to be quite smart and crafty, as he figures out who was in on his sneaking into the kitchen the night before without Carlos confessing; he waits for them to look up at Carlos as he walks by them while they're eating breakfast at the table. Above all else, Casares has definite feelings for Carmen and has had them even when Ricardo was still alive. When she suggests he head back to Argentina while he can, he tells her, "Twenty years ago, I found my place in the world. And I stayed," while gently touching her pinky finger with his own." But, while Carmen does feel the same way about Casares, his inability to fulfill her sexual needs has led her to a long-running, empty affair with Jacinto, which she's so ashamed of that she refuses to allow him to kiss her. Unbeknownst to them, Casares is aware of it, as his room is right next to hers, but says nothing.

While in town one night, Casares is shocked to find that the International Brigade has captured a group of suspected loyalists that include Ayala. He tells Carmen of it the next day and insists that they and the children evacuate to Marseille. He also intends to use the gold as part of their escape, and when Carmen says it's for the cause, Casares flat-out says, "Fuck the cause, Carmen! Fuck the cause! I always thought there'd be an 'afterwards' for us. There is no afterwards!" He then admits his

concern for her, and she decides to go along with his plan, only for Jacinto to reveal his intention to take the gold for himself. He threatens her to give him the key to the safe, only for Casares to threaten him with a shotgun and order him to leave. Though they do manage to force him out of the building, he gets back in and sets a fire that leads to an explosion which, among other things, mortally wounds Carmen and blows Casares' ears out, rendering him almost completely deaf. When he

finds Carmen, he attempts to save her, but it's clear there's nothing he can do, and he tearfully recites a poem for her as she gradually fades away. After she's dead, Casares arms himself with his shotgun, heads upstairs, and sits down, waiting for Jacinto to return so he can kill him. Eventually, he succumbs to his own injuries and dies, allowing Jacinto and his cronies free reign over the half-destroyed orphanage when they return to search for the gold, imprisoning the orphans as they do so. However, like Santi before him, Casares becomes a ghost

himself, keeping a promise he made to Carlos and Jaime that he would never leave, and manages to help the orphans by freeing them, as well as encouraging them to be brave. This is sadly ironic, as he earlier has a talk with Carlos about the ghost in the orphanage, saying he doesn't really believe in it (though he does prove to be somewhat superstitious, drinking something that's said to help with impotence). And at the end of the movie, as his spirit watches the surviving orphans flee into

the desert, he solemnly adds onto the narration he opened with: "What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber. A ghost is me. A ghost. That is what I am."

At first glance, Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) seems like a good-looking, if somewhat stern, caretaker, but it doesn't take long for you to realize just how cruel, nasty, and despicable he is. The night of Carlos' arrival, Jacinto is seen hanging out with his two lackeys from town, Pig and Marcelo, and when they leave, we first learn of his plan to steal the gold cache, using various keys on the safe. We later learn that he gets these keys by slipping them off Carmen's personal chain after their sexual encounters in her bedroom. In the aftermath of one, he notes how ashamed Carmen is of their trysts, which have apparently been going on since he was seventeen. He talks about how Casares, the one she really loves, is a gentleman, but adds, "Pity that's not enough. You need a hard cock as well." He continues, "The old man stares at you. He loves you. He loved you even back when your husband was still alive. I was seventeen. They both took care of the poetry. I took care of the flesh." Having spent at least half of his life at the orphanage, Jacinto has come to despise the place, telling his fiance, Conchita, "When I was a kid, I'd stand here, in the middle of the yard, and I'd look up at the sky. I dreamed of getting out of here. I prayed to become rich so I could buy this dump and I could tear it all down... I don't want anyone to know I spent fifteen years here." Though Conchita wants him to come with her to Granada and buy a farm there, Jacinto is determined to steal the gold for his own selfish needs. He's brutal to the kids when they snoop around the kitchen, which contains the safe, and is even worse when he finds them down near the cistern. He grabs Jaime by his hair, despite the fact that he just nearly drowned, and yanks him up, demanding to know why they're down there. And when Carlos, seeing how much Jaime fears Jacinto, says the knife he finds on the floor near the pool is his, Jacinto growls, "If anything happens to you, I get the blame." He proceeds to cut him across the cheek, chases them out of there, and warns Carlos, "A single word about this and I'll rip you in half."

When Casares and Carmen decide to evacuate the orphanage out of fear that the Nationalists will come for their gold soon, Jacinto confronts the latter. At first coming off as angry that they didn't seem to consider doing anything to help him, he orders her to leave the gold with him. She shuts the safe and, as he tries to make her give him the key, she tells him, "I hid you here so you wouldn't enlist and die out there, with no one to mourn you. But you know what? Of all the orphans, you were 

always the saddest. The lost one. A prince without a kingdom. The only one who was really alone." And when Casares threatens him with a shotgun, he snidely comments, "You know that while you whisper sweet things to this old hag, I'm the one who has to screw her?" Carmen whacks him in the right eye with the head of her cane for that, and he falls to the floor and actually whines softly like a little kid. He's then forced out of the building, but manages to get back in and pours gasoline all 

around the kitchen. Conchita finds him doing this and threatens him with the shotgun. Jacinto doesn't take it seriously, even smacks the barrel of the gun in a mocking manner, when it goes off and grazes him in the shoulder. With that, he uses a cigarette to ignite the gasoline, leading to an explosion that causes massive destruction and kills and wounds a number of people, while he manages to get clear. As if he weren't already a monstrous person, that night, Jaime reveals that, when he and Santi were

down by the cistern one night, collecting slugs, the latter caught Jacinto trying to get into the safe. He cornered Santi downstairs, smacking him across the face while demanding to know how much he saw and who was with him. He ultimately shoved him headfirst into a stone pillar, causing an injury that made him collapse and go into shock. Panicked and horrified by what he'd just done, Jacinto tied some stones to Santi's body and dumped him into the cistern.

Though his killing Santi may have been an accident, by the time of the main story, Jacinto now has no qualms with killing anybody who gets in his way. When he and his cronies come across Conchita on his way back to the orphanage, he tries to manipulate her into apologizing for shooting him, mainly to save face in front of them. Conchita staunchly refuses, and Jacinto cruelly guts her to death. Upon arriving, he's irked to find that Casares is still alive, but decides to wait him out. Once he

does die, Jacinto and his men move in and take the orphans prisoner, with Jacinto himself taking Casares' shotgun out of his death-grip. They force the kids to dig through the rubble to reach the safe, while Jacinto, in a horribly cruel moment, gives Jaime back a ring he gave Conchita, making him realize she's dead. But, while they find the safe, when they crack it open, they find no gold whatsoever, much to Jacinto's anger. Regardless, he's not about to give up, as he knows Carmen just

hid it somewhere else. That night, as they sit around the fire, grumbling about it, there's a poignant and humanizing moment where Jacinto looks through some old photos and finds some of his parents, one of them holding him as a baby. He notes that his image is blurred because he moved at the moment it was taken. On the back of one photo of him as a teen, he reads, "How lonely, the prince without a kingdom, the man without warmth. Jacinto, 1925, in Malaga." Regardless of how he appears to be somewhat touched, he says he plans

to burn the place to the ground once he finds the gold, along with the orphans, saying they won't be missed. He adds to that, "We're at war. Just a drop in the ocean." The next day, his men leave him behind, having had enough of his craziness, unaware that he just found the gold, hidden in Carmen's discarded prosthetic leg. But he doesn't have time to make use of it, as the kids stand up to him, with Carlos intending on helping Santi get revenge for his death.

Poor Conchita (Irene Visedo) is a very lovely young teacher at the orphanage who plans on marrying Jacinto, unaware of his dangerous personality and ruthless ambition. She often tries to be romantic with him but it's clear his only interest in her is to satisfy his sexual urges and desires, and he's not willing to do anything potentially foolish for her, like dancing, as long as others are watching. It's not until he tries to take the gold from Carmen during the evacuation and later finds him pouring gasoline all over the kitchen that she realizes how unhinged and psychotic he is. Following the explosion, which she manages to escape without serious injury, Conchita decides to make the long walk to the nearest town, which will take her all night and into the next day. Before she departs, Jaime, who has a crush on her, gives her a, "Grain for strength," as she'd done for the kids in the morning, and she shows him that she's still wearing a ring he recently gave her. But before she reaches town, Jacinto and his cronies come across her. When she refuses to apologize for what she did and calls him out on his craziness, Jacinto stabs her and leaves her dead in the road.

It goes without saying that, as with all of Guillermo del Toro's movies, The Devil's Backbone is very well shot, a big reason being his re-teaming with cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who shot Cronos and went on to shoot a number of his later movies. Like with Cronos, the film has a rich color palette, with a bright vibrancy to both the exterior and interior daytime scenes, with the latter having some instances of oranges and golds within them, while the nighttime scenes are often bathed in that pale-blue lighting that makes me think of the

original Halloween and other classic flicks. Speaking of the color, while I love the high-definition transfer the Criterion Collection gave the film, I also kind of like the way it looked on the 100 Scariest Movie Moments, where Carlos seemed almost as pale as Santi. The use of light and shadow is well-done, not only for the eerie scenes where Carlos encounters Santi but also for memorable shots looking out into the bright desert from within the orphanage's interiors, one of which is the last shot of the movie. As for the

camerawork, del Toro never gets too fancy or showy with it, but he does give you some wide, expansive shots of the desert landscape that get across how isolated this setting is and which also wouldn't be out of place in a Sergio Leone film. A couple of times, his camera passes through the wall, like the one separating Casares' and Carmen's rooms, showing how close yet separated they are, as well as how Casares is aware of her sexual encounters with Jacinto. Del Toro shoots the scenes

with Santi especially well, sometimes hinting at his presence with shadows or brief glimpses of him in the background or off in the distance, creating suspense with shots of the orphanage's long, dark hallways, and making him appear close to or behind Carlos when you least expect it. One of the best shots in this case is when Carlos hides in a closet and looks out the keyhole, only for Santi to look back at him from the other side. It's a trope that's been used before, for sure, but when it's done

effectively, it doesn't feel cliched whatsoever. And there are a few moments done underwater, in the cistern where Santi's body was dumped, which effectively create the feeling of murky, cloudy water, with the ghost often lurking in there just out of sight.

I always love isolated settings in horror films, and while they're usually best done in cold, snowy environments (John Carpenter's The Thing, The Shining, Misery, etc.), being stuck out in the middle of the desert, with the nearest town being miles away, also works. The opening scene, with Carlos' arrival at the orphanage, makes it clear just how much they are out in the middle of nowhere, and with the Spanish Civil War raging across the countryside, it's obvious that, when things begin going downhill, there is no one coming to help

them. The only scenes that don't take place there are the one where Dr. Casares is in town and when Conchita is found by Jacinto and his cronies out in the desert; otherwise, we're always within the orphanage's walls, either in the courtyard, where an inert bomb sits stuck in the ground as a constant reminder of the war, or inside the building itself (the Talamanca del Jarama in Madrid). Though very old, a bit claustrophobic, and in something of a state of disrepair, there is a beauty to the place, especially in such rooms as Carmen's rather elegant

bedroom and Casares' smaller but cozy one, where he listens to music on his phonograph while reciting poetry and limericks as he gets dressed in the morning. Casares also has a large, elegant study and lab, where he not only does his medical work but also keeps jars containing fetuses with a condition called "the devil's backbone." Significantly, he takes the liquid from these jars, which is made from various spices and rum, and sells it in town to help keep the orphanage afloat,

as it's believed to have medicinal properties, such as curing impotency. But where you see the place's poorer, as well as less inviting aspects, is in the orphans' bedroom, which is a large room where the cots are lined up in rows along both sides, with only numbers distinguishing them; the very small dining room they have to eat in; and the small classrooms. Moreover, Jacinto lives in what initially seems like a tool-shed, with tools and clutter everywhere, and with only a small bed and a radio that can truly be called his.

But for several reasons, the building housing the kitchen, right next to the dining room, is the most significant spot in the story. For one, it's here, behind a false section of wall next to the stove, where the safe housing the gold is hidden, and why Jacinto becomes hostile towards any kids he finds snooping around it. Even though this place is pretty innocuous for the most part, it does have some wicked-looking shears as part of the cutlery, which fall to the floor at one point, leading to Carlos getting trapped inside when Jacinto investigates the

noise. More importantly, through a doorway in the back of the place is a flight of stairs that leads down into a huge chamber, akin to the tunnels said to be beneath the streets of London and Paris, which contains the cistern where Santi was drowned. In the hardcover booklet that comes with Criterion Collection's La Trilogia Blu-Ray set are del Toro's production sketches for the film, and when discussing this chamber, he says he came up with the idea that, originally, it was a Roman mosaic tile factory, which require pools of water, but was left abandoned when the place was converted into an orphanage.

Though it's used mainly as just a backdrop for the story, throughout the movie, we're often reminded of the war that's tearing the country apart and that, despite their isolation, those at the orphanage could fall victim to it at any given moment. The most obvious one is the inert bomb sticking up in the courtyard which, while it never detonated and has since been diffused, is, as del Toro says in his production sketches, "Quite literally, the presence of the war that [is] waged far away but lodged within the characters in their most intimate spaces."

Moreover, one of the visuals the movie opens with is the bombing run that deployed it, again showing how the orphanage isn't as removed from the war as they would like to think it is. Moreover, we know that both Dr. Casares and Carmen live with the war all the time, given their cache of gold for the Republican treasury, Carmen's husband having died as a result of it, and the simple fact that many of the orphans are the children of Reds who have either fallen in battle or can't keep them safe

anymore. The war truly begins to knock at their door when, while in town, Casares sees that their comrade, Ayala, is among those captured by the International Brigade. He witnesses them execute some of the prisoner right then and there, and fears Ayala will be tortured into revealing the gold's location. But then, of course, the orphanage becomes the sight of its own, small war when Jacinto nearly destroys the place and then raids it to try to find the gold.

When talking about it on the 100 Scariest Movie Moments, del Toro said of The Devil's Backbone, "I wanted the ghost story to be a metaphor for the war, and the war to be a metaphor for the ghost story." Looking at it through that lens, it is interesting how what's happening at the orphanage, especially during the third act, is a microcosm of what's going on throughout the entire country of Spain. Just like how, despite Casares' optimism, Spain is abandoned by Europe and left to deal with the expanding fascist regime of Francisco Franco

by themselves, the orphans are abandoned in the middle of nowhere, with no one to help them, and eventually end up in the hands of a trio of men who are fascists in their own right, with Jacinto writing their deaths off as just more casualties of war. By the same token, Santi's death at the hands of Jacinto is just one of many lives lost during the war and history itself, leading to more moments of pain and sadness caught in time, i.e. ghosts, including Dr. Casares himself by the end of the film.

That leads into another major impetus behind the film, which was, as del Toro also said in that special, to show, "How unsafe it is to be a child," adding, "Many times, I saw children almost kill each other." Though I was fortunate enough to grow up in a very safe world in East Tennessee, where the worst things I had to deal with during my childhood were annoying bullies and the overall crappy nature of the elementary school I went to, I think we all know that that isn't the case everywhere in the world, and it's especially

exacerbated when your country is caught up in a war. The plight of children caught up in such a situation is shown in explicit detail, as the orphans are the children of loyalists who have either died or are unable to keep them safe and have been left to virtually fend for themselves. A distilling of what many of these boys likely went through when they first arrived is seen when Carlos, unaware that his father has been killed and thinking that his tutor has just driven to the orphanage to settle other matters, sees Ayala leave his suitcase behind before

slipping out the gate and driving off without him. It's tough to watch as Carlos futilely runs after the car, and though Dr. Casares is able to be there for him and momentarily soothe his pain, you see him still trying to process the situation he's been thrust into after he's been shown to his cot. Even worse, while he makes some friends, he also runs afoul of Jaime, who not only mocks and harasses him, and gets him in trouble, but even pulls a knife on him at one point. And then there's Jacinto, who's another

adult who should be looking out for him but is absolutely terrifying to the boy, chasing him down and grabbing him when he catches him out in the courtyard after curfew and later cutting his cheek and threatening him if he says anything. You eventually learn that Jaime's bullying nature was a means of covering up his own fear of Jacinto, as well as his guilt over what happened to Santi. Santi, naturally, is the ultimate example of this notion, as he's accidentally killed while being

menaced by Jacinto, who then dumps his body into the cistern in the basement. Jacinto's greed also leads to the death of many other orphans when he blows up the kitchen and you see their bodies lying about as Conchita and Casares try to make sense of what's happened. And finally, once all the other adults are dead, the kids are taken prisoner by Jacinto and his thugs, who force them to dig through the rubble to find the safe before shutting them away, with Jacinto threatening to burn the place down with them still in it.

For the entire movie, Santi is less of an actual character than he is a dark cloud that hangs over the orphanage, a true embodiment of the notion that a ghost is a past wrong or sin that has returned to haunt the present. Carlos sees him almost as soon as he arrives, standing in the kitchen's doorway, but after that, the film proceeds to only hint at his presence for a while, often through his shadow, which is seen heading down the stairs to the basement area and on the other side of the drape separating Carlos' cot from the others, his

disembodied voice warning Carlos that many of them will die, and the sighing sound he makes, which has led to the kids nicknaming him, "The one who sighs." We don't see what he looks in full detail until almost thirty minutes in, and even then, he has very little screentime, as he takes a backseat to the threat both the war and Jacinto pose to the orphanage. When he is onscreen, Santi is both quite creepy and seemingly menacing in his scenes with Carlos, with how he suddenly appears behind him and touches him, and in the one scene where he frightens Carlos to the point where he hides overnight in a closet. But at the same time, there is a definite sadness to him in how he was an innocent kid who, because he saw something he shouldn't have, suffered a horrible death, at the hands of somebody who was meant to look out for him, no less. Now, he's unable to rest, and can only wander the halls of the orphanage, consumed by the anguish and pain he felt at the time of his death, as evident by his constantly bleeding head wound and his pained breathing. And as scary as he is to Carlos, he never out and out threatens him; in fact, he often tries to avoid him, and when Carlos first attempts to talk to him, asking him how he can avoid the deaths that he said would come to pass, he has his back to him and shakes his head. He only turns around when pressed, and when he approaches Carlos in the dormitory, he likely just wants to communicate. Sure enough, when Carlos, upon learning the circumstances of his death, does speak with him, Santi tells him to bring Jacinto to him, so he can get revenge.

As I've said, when the movie first begins, Dr. Casares' voice ponders, "What is a ghost?", and throughout the story, we see that a ghost can, as he suggests, be more than just a spirit of the dead, the embodiment of past mistakes that won't stay buried, or residual energy of tragic events that replays again and again. A ghost can also be someone stuck in a hopeless situation from which there is no escape, and that's certainly the case of Casares and Carmen, who are supporting a Spain that basically doesn't exist anymore, aiding a

rebellion against Franco's regime that is a lost cause and on its last legs. In fact, when Carmen talks of how bleak the war's outcome looks, she comments, "Sometimes, I think that we are the ghosts." What's more, the two of them have obvious affection for each other but, for their own reasons, are unable to go through with it, and Carmen, like Santi, has to live with the anguish and pain she feels from her severed right leg. There's also the inert bomb in the courtyard, which is not

only a specter of what it once was but will likely remain than there as a reminder of the war for many years to come. Not surprisingly, there's a connection between it and Santi, to where Carlos actually asks it to point the way to Santi's whereabouts (which it kind of does). And finally, there's the character of Jacinto, who's been in a hopeless situation and mindset his entire life, accumulating over the years until he's become a murderous, inhuman animal. Most tellingly, the one picture he can find of himself as a child has his image blurred because he moved at the moment it was taken, as if he were doomed from the beginning to have no soul.

Going back to Santi himself, his look is a well-done mixture of makeup and visual effects, with the former coming in the form of his pale skin, tattered clothes, and milky-white eyes, while an effects company in Barcelona added the details of the cracked left temple, with blood flowing upwards out of it, the particles constantly floating around Santi that are meant to represent the murky water he drowned in, which sometimes linger, along with the blood, after he's disappeared, and how his skin and clothes become translucent as he

moves, offering glimpses of his skeleton underneath. For the most part, Santi is played by Junio Valverde, who also plays him in the flashback to when he was alive, but for some of the scenes where he's underwater, it's actually Andreas Munoz, as Valverde's ears were injured by the water pressure. Unless you stop the film and really look at it, though, you shouldn't be able to tell it's a different person. As for the other effects in the movie, the makeup and blood are top notch. While this is not an extremely gory film, there are

moments and injuries that do make you wince, such as the bloody head wound Santi receives before he's drowned, the nasty, fatal wounds Dr. Casares and Carmen receive when Jacinto blows up the kitchen, as well as the ugly wounds on Owl's back as a result, and when Jacinto himself gets stabbed right in the armpit during his final confrontation with the orphans (as horrible a person as he is, just the thought of it makes you go, "Ooh, ow!"), as well as in his arm and all over his

body. They also do a good of making it look as though Marisa Paredes only has one leg in her role of Carmen, creating a believable-looking stump on her right leg, as I doubt they were able to digitally remove it, given the low budget. And finally, you have the preserved fetuses with the condition of spina bifida, or "the devil's backbone," as it's known locally, which Casares keeps in large jars in his study. Those are very well-crafted, as they look quite realistic, and the spinal condition itself is another thing that makes you wince when you see it, particularly during the opening credits, where you get some very uncomfortable close-ups of it, as well as their entire bodies.

While the visual effects used to create the complete, ghostly version of Santi, as well as the ghostly phenomena associated with him, are well-done, there are other instances of visual effects in the movie that are more of a mixed bag. Fortunately, they're only used for very brief shots, so it doesn't matter that much. Some examples are the CGI rocks Jaime and Marcos shoot at Carlos, a quick shot of a CGI gear that Carlos tosses at Jaime when he threatens him with a knife, a shot of the bomb coming right at the camera during the

flashback to Santi's death, and some tiny, digital flies buzzing around Casares when, as a ghost, he sets the orphans free. Really, the only visual effects that lingers onscreen a bit too long is an obvious blue screen shot of Carmen and some of the orphans in front of the fireball when the kitchen explodes, and a similar one of Conchita and other orphans when a car blows up behind them. In fact, some of them are just as impressive as Santi, like

an opening shot of the bomb dropping from a plane's hangar, with a view of the war going on below (it looks as if there could've been some miniature work at play there), the explosion that rips through the orphanage, the shot of the bombers flying over it in the stormy sky, and the physical effect of the bomb actually landing and sticking into the courtyard.

The movie opens with a short montage of significant images, like the doorway leading down to the basement beneath the kitchen, the bomb being dropped, Santi bleeding out on the floor, his body getting dropped down into the cistern, and Jaime crying on the edge of it, all while we hear Dr. Casares ponder what a ghost is. Shortly after he arrives at the orphanage and is waiting for Ayala and Dominguez, Carlos is collecting some slugs in the courtyard and adding them to his personal

collection in a small box. When he looks up, he glimpses Santi's ghost for the first time, as he stands in the doorway to the kitchen. He's momentarily distracted by sounds behind him, and when he looks back, the boy is no longer in the doorway. Curious, he slowly approaches the building, the inside of which is quite dark, despite the bright day outside and the fire burning in the stove. In the back of the room, he spots the doorway leading down to the basement and sees

Santi's shadow walking down the stairs. Before he can follow, he meets Galvez and Owl for the first time, and the three of them walk back out into the courtyard together. As they do, the camera stays in the doorway and pans over to the dirty window, where Santi's reflection appears as he watches them. Carlos has another encounter with the ghost that night, in the orphans' bedroom, as he lies in his cot, unable to sleep because he's still processing what's become of his life. Right after he notices

Santi's name etched into the pillar next to his cot, he hears the eerie sound of someone sighing, only in a distant, echoing manner. Sitting up in bed, he looks to his left and sees a shadow behind the drape separating his cot from the others. He gets up out of bed, asking the figure who they are, when they put their hand on the drape and run it down the length of it. Carlos yanks back the drape, only to find no one on the other side. He throws back the covers of the cot next to his and, finding no one under there, walks out into the middle of the room

and looks under the other beds on his side. He then hears a loud clatter at the end of his row and sees that a pitcher of water has suddenly turned over, dumping all over the floor. A second one across from it immediately does the same, waking up the other kids, while Carlos bends down and sees wet footprints leading out of the room. He looks through the doorway and into the hall there to see a shadow pass along the wall. That's when he's accused of dumping the water himself, and Jaime tells him to go down to the kitchen and get some

more. This is the first time "the one who sighs" is mentioned, and Carlos asks who that is. Jaime responds by accusing him of being too chicken to go, thus Carlos agrees to do it, but makes him go with him.

The two of them sneak out of the dormitory, each carrying a pitcher, and heads towards the kitchen. They walk towards the inert bomb in the courtyard, which Jaime says he doesn't think is as dead as it seems. They have to hide behind it when Conchita comes out of the main building and meets up with Jacinto in his tool shed-like room. They peak through the window, as Jacinto and Conchita start making out, then head to the kitchen. The double-doors are strung together by a padlock, forcing

them to squeeze and fumble through the narrow opening of the door. Once inside, Jaime quickly fills up his pitcher and heads back out. Carlos begins filling his pitcher, when suddenly, a line of shears hanging up behind him fall to the floor with a loud clatter. It's loud enough that, even with the radio playing in his room, Jacinto hears it. He heads out towards the kitchen, wielding a loaded shotgun. Carlos picks up the cutlery and tries to hang it back up, but that proves to be futile and he,

instead, runs for the door. He sees Jacinto's shadow through the glass and quickly hides as he unlocks the doors and flings them open. Walking in and seeing the fallen cutlery, he puts his gun aside, lights himself a cigarette, as well as a lantern, and removes the section of wall hiding Carmen's safe. He attempts to unlock it with a key, unaware that Carlos is hiding nearby, watching him. Jacinto becomes frustrated when the key doesn't work, then gets an eerie feeling when a sudden gust of air

blows out his lantern's flame. He stands up and warily looks at the doorway leading downstairs, before leaving the kitchen and putting a new lock on the chain. Unbeknownst to him, Jaime is watching from behind the bomb. Jacinto finishes his cigarette and heads back to his room, while inside, Carlos comes out of his hiding place. He breathes a sigh of relief and is about to leave, when he hears the sighing coming from the nearby doorway. Setting his pitcher down on a table, he slowly walks to the doorway and heads down the

stairs, calling for whoever it was he heard. He reaches the bottom of the stairs and enters the enormous chamber down below. He walks up to the edge of the cistern and looks around, when a shadowy figure runs in the shadows over to his left. He calls to the person, asking them who they are and if they live down there, while the camera pans over and we get our first good look at Santi's ghost. Carlos cautiously walks over and around the large pillar there, only to find nothing on the other side. But when the camera pans back, Santi appears

behind him and touches his shoulder before vanishing into thin air (when he does, they put in a stock sound effect of a woman screaming, which I find to be kind of cheesy, personally). Carlos swings around and, initially, doesn't see anything. When he looks closer, though, he sees the blood floating in the air and actually touches it. He hears Santi sigh continuously and whisper, "Many of you will die."

Hearing that sends Carlos bolting back upstairs, where he grabs his pitcher and attempts to get back out through the door. As he struggles to squeeze through, Jaime, who was sitting there, waiting for him, takes the opportunity to walk back into the dormitory, ignoring him as he yells for his help. Frustrated, Carlos removes his pajama top to make it easier to slip through, when he sees Santi's shadow ascending the stairs. Frightened, Carlos squeezes his way through the door, then reaches

back in for his pitcher, stretching his arm as far as he can, while Santi slowly approaches him. He manages to grab it and pull it out just in time, but as soon as he does, it becomes eerily quiet, with no sign of anyone inside. He quickly walks back towards the dormitory, only to see the other boys looking out the window at him, with Jaime waving at him in a mocking manner. While Owl and Galvez opt not to, Jaime and Marcos pull out their slingshots and fire rocks at him, smashing the pitcher right in his hands. Carlos stands there, in

shock, as well as hurt about what just happened, when he turns around and sees Jacinto stomping towards him. Carlos futilely tries to run but Jacinto chases him down, grabs him, and demands that he tell him what he's doing out there.

The next day, after he, Owl, and Galvez finish the chore they were given as punishment for their shenanigans the previous night, Carlos gives them a prize in the form of a wind-up frog. Later, while they're fiddling with it, Jaime comes up to them and asks where Carlos is. Turns out, he's back in the basement, squatting on the edge of the cistern, asking the figure he saw down there if he's "the one who sighs." He puts his hand in the water and waves it back and forth, when he's suddenly

grabbed from behind. It turns out to be Marcos, who holds him in place as Jaime, calling him an ass-kisser to Dr. Casares, pulls out a knife and threatens him. He tells Marcos to throw him down, but before Jaime can attack, Carlos grabs a small gear and throws it at him, knocking him into the cistern. Galvez exclaims that he can't swim and Carlos promptly jumps into the cistern himself. He's unable to find Jaime in the murky water and comes back up for air. Galvez and Marcos point

him to where Jaime went under and he dives back down to search again. Feeling around, he finds and grabs Jaime, then swims up with him, as Santi watches from farther down in the depths. The two of them pop up and Carlos swims Jaime over to the edge, where Galvez and Marcos pull him up. Just as Carlos climbs up out of the water as well, Jacinto shows up, looking very displeased at what he's found. He yells at them for being down there, grabbing Jaime by his hair and wrenching him up. He then finds Jaime's knife on the floor and

demands to know whose it is. He focuses in on the frightened Jaime, when Carlos suddenly says that the knife is his. Bending down in front of Carlos, Jacinto strokes his hair, only to cut him across the cheek after snarling about how he'll get the blame if anything happens to them. He yells for the boys to get out and they quickly run out of the chamber. But before Carlos can leave, Jacinto warns him that he'll kill him if he says anything about what just happened. Carlos leaves and Jacinto looks down at the cistern.

That night, while hanging out with his newfound friends, Carlos learns more about the one who sighs, as Galvez tells him that he appeared right after the bomb dropped, which also coincided with Santi's sudden "disappearance," which is a very touchy subject for Jaime. Because of their connection, Galvez suggests that Carlos ask the bomb where the ghost can be found. After this, a shot outside in the courtyard reveals Santi looking through the kitchen window, out at the bomb, as

the colored tassels on its end flap in the wind. The following night, while the others sleep, Carlos snoops around in Jaime's locker and takes out his sketchbook. Looking through it, he finds a drawing of a ghostly figure named Santi. Now more curious than ever, he goes out into the courtyard and asks the bomb to lead him where Santi is. As if answering him, a sudden gust of wind blows one of the tassels off and it floats into the open kitchen doorway. Slowly approaching it, he sees Santi

standing just beyond it, his back to him. He attempts to speak to the ghost, saying he doesn't want anyone to die, but Santi repeats his warning and then turns to face Carlos. Finally getting a good look at him, Carlos is frightened and runs back to the dormitory. But after he stops to catch his breath, he looks down the long hallway to his right and sees Santi standing in a doorway at the end of it. He slowly moves down the hall, approaching him, causing Carlos to panic even more. He attempts to escape through the doors on

either side of his end of the hall, but one won't open and the other turns out to be a closet. Carlos has little choice, though, as he turns back around to see Santi right in front of him. He ducks inside the closet and holds the door handle, as Santi tries to turn it from the other side. After several seconds of this, it stops and Carlos lets go of the handle and peeks out through the keyhole. For a few moments, he sees nothing, but then, Santi's eye appears on the other side, looking right at him. Carlos backs away, then grabs the handle again when Santi

attempts to get inside once more. The film goes to black as he keeps trying to prevent the ghost from entering, and it comes back up on the next morning. One of the teachers, Alma, brings some fresh linen to the closet, only for Carlos, who fell asleep, to wake up suddenly and scream in terror at her. Alma screams as well, while Carlos runs down the hall. As she watches him, the other orphans come out of the bedroom, unaware of what just happened.

Later that morning, after he attempts to steal the gold, only to be stopped at gunpoint by Dr. Casares, Jacinto appears to leave the orphanage and walk off into the desert. Everyone then prepares to evacuate to avoid the Nationalists; in the midst of it, Carlos reveals to Jaime that he knows Santi is the one who sighs. As they're loading up the truck, Casares sends Conchita to get some more gas for the drive ahead, only to go inside the shed where the cans are stored and find 

them gone. Finding that the rear door, which was slightly ajar, leads out into the desert, she realizes Jacinto must've doubled back. She goes back inside the gate and grabs a shotgun out of one of the other vehicles, only to find a trail of gasoline leading from it to the kitchen. Following it inside, she comes across Jacinto pouring gasoline all over the back wall, having stashed a number of gas cans there already. Once he's finished, he casually lights a cigarette. She points the shotgun at him but he

doesn't take it seriously, going as far as mocking her and smacking the barrel up and down. Suddenly, the gun goes off, clipping him in his left shoulder and knocking Conchita to the floor. Enraged, he grabs his dropped cigarette, blows on the lit end, and tosses it, igniting the gas. While he escapes, Conchita comes to, grabs the shotgun, and warns Casares to get the children out of the building, as it's going to explode. As they try to evacuate the children, Alma rushes into the kitchen

to try to put out the fire, while Carmen follows after her, trying to convince her to forget about it. Outside, though they've managed to get most of the children out, Casares realizes Carmen isn't with them. He walks back to the building, just as Carmen tries to make a small group of kids standing in the doorway get out. At that moment, a huge explosion rips through the orphanage, engulfing Alma, rushing at Carmen, and blowing Casares off his feet outside. The flames then reach the car, blowing it up and sending debris at

Conchita and the other orphans. The screen goes to black for a few seconds, comes up to show Jacinto watching the smoke from a nearby field, then goes back to black and comes back up to show Casares awakening and getting to his feet. The sound gets very muffled, as his ears have been blown out, and he looks around him to see a lot of destruction, as well as number of dead children. A distraught Conchita points him to the burning husk of a building that was the kitchen and he walks inside to find more people, both adults and children, dead.

He also finds Carmen, alive but badly injured, under some rubble. Moving it off, he examines her, removing a piece of shrapnel from her chest, then attempts to stop the bleeding with pressure. He tells Carlos, who walked in behind him, to fetch his medical bag from his laboratory, but there's nothing he can do to save her, as she passes away while he's looking after her.

After laying Carmen to rest, Casares grabs his shotgun and some shells, then heads up to the attic, telling Carlos, who follows him, that he's going to wait for Jacinto's inevitable return. Sitting down in a chair in front of an open window, he tells Carlos to fetch his music and records so he can listen to them while he waits. That night, in the ruins of what was the orphans' bedroom, Jaime admits to Carlos that Santi is dead and tells him what happened. The ensuing flashback shows the two of

them squatting by the cistern, collecting slugs, when Santi hears some clattering upstairs. Handing Jaime the box, he walks up there and finds Jacinto trying to break into the safe. Jacinto spots him and stands up, sending Santi running back down. He tells Jaime that it's Jacinto and he runs to hide. Before Santi can do the same, Jacinto runs in and quickly corners him by the edge of the cistern. He demands to know how much he saw, slapping Santi across the face, and when he tries to get around

him, he grabs him and holds him from behind. Planting his hand over his mouth, he demands to know who else is with him. Santi bites him and he throws him forward, causing him to hit his head on the wall. He falls to the floor and goes into convulsions from the traumatic head wound he just received. Realizing what he's done, Jacinto tells Santi to get up, but when he doesn't respond, he goes and grabs some rope. Meanwhile, Jaime comes out from hiding and is horrified when he sees just how seriously injured Santi is. Before he

can do anything to help him, he has to hide again when Jacinto comes back, having tied one end of the rope to some stones. He ties the other end around Santi and drops him into the cistern. Jacinto then leaves, while Jaime comes back out and sobs at the edge of the water, looking at the blood rising up from where Santi sank. He runs back upstairs and out into a rainstorm, when he looks up and sees some planes flying through the clouds up above. He watches closely, when a bomb drops

down from one of them, hitting the ground right in front of him, only for it to fail to explode. He backs away from it, but when it doesn't go off, he slowly approaches and even touches it. The film cuts back to the present, with Jaime promising to kill Jacinto if he sees him again.

The next day, following the scene where Jacinto and his cronies come across Conchita, and he kills her when she refuses to apologize or join them, Carlos and Jaime have the unenviable task of sewing up a nasty wound that Owl received in his back. They go to tell Casares about this, when they hear the sound of a vehicle approaching. Carlos helps Casares to his feet, while Jaime turns on the phonograph and points it out the window. The three of them watch the vehicle come to a stop, and they realize who it is when Jacinto and his men

disembark. Though Jacinto is irked to find that Casares isn't dead like he figured he'd be, he decides they can wait him out. They go in reverse like they're leaving, giving those watching them a sense of false hope. Casares sits back down in his chair, commenting, "All my life, I've always stopped short. Always left things unfinished. I'm not going to leave you alone. I promise you. I will never leave this place," as the sound of his music echoes across the countryside. Later, Carlos, Galvez, and Marcos are cleaning up the inside of

the kitchen, when the latter two leave Carlos by himself. He bends down to pick up an apple that's charred on top, when Santi appears behind him. Seeing him, Carlos says he's not going to run away now, that he wants to talk to him. At the same time, Jaime, who stayed up in the attic with Casares, realizes that the old man has died from his injuries. He closes his eyes, as flies buzz around him, when he hears someone whisper, "Psst. Psst," to him offscreen. Meanwhile, Carlos asks Santi what it is

he wants and his answer is simple: "Jacinto. Bring him to me." Santi reaches for Carlos' face and dissipates; Carlos agrees to help him. He rushes back up to the attic to tell Jaime of this, only to find that Casares has died. Even worse, he finds that Jacinto has subdued Jaime and has Casares' gun, which he says he had to break his fingers in order to get, adding, "Even in death, he's stubborn."

He and his men make the orphans dig through the rubble to find the safe. Soon, Galvez finds it, and Jacinto and Marcelo push past him and completely uncover it, much to the latter's delight, as it proves it wasn't a waste of time. Jacinto then gives Jaime back the ring he gave Conchita, letting him know that she's dead, and the kids are forced into and locked up in a storeroom. While the men work to open up the safe, Jaime, finding a window with a little bit of glass and some wire in it, says that someone will have to climb through and open the

door from the outside. Though the others are unwilling to do anything at first, he tells them that Jacinto killed Santi and will likely do the same to all of them. Galvez mentions that the men are bigger than them and have the gun, but Jaime reminds him that they outnumber them. They get to work for their revolt, sharpening some sticks into spears and removing the glass and wire from the window. Galvez is the one who opts to slip through the window, with Jaime's help. At one point, Jaime attempts to remove one last shard of glass, only to

stick himself and drop it, causing it to loudly break on the floor below. For a moment, they're worried the men might've heard it, but they realize they're too busy working on the safe to notice. Jaime helps Galvez further through the window but when he lets go, the drop is harder than he expected, and Galvez's left foot bends in a nasty way when it hits the floor. Painfully pulling himself up, he hobbles over to where he can sit down and examine his foot, while the men are frustrated to find no gold in

the safe. The boys discuss who will have to climb through the window and help Galvez, when they get some very sudden and unexpected help: the figure of Casares walks up to the door and unlocks it. They slowly creep out and, seeing the coast is clear, come to Galvez's aid. While Carlos examines his foot, Galvez tells them Casares was the one who did it, as well as that he said for them to be brave. Looking at his ankle, Carlos pushes it back into place, then sees a bloody handkerchief, with Casares' initials on it, at his feet. Later that night, they overhear how Jacinto plans to burn the place down and kill them all when he finds the gold.

The next day, just when Jacinto finds Carmen's discarded prosthetic leg, which is full of the gold, he finds that Marcelo and Pig have abandoned him. Not exactly devastated, as it means he gets to keep it all, he puts nearly all of the small bars in a rag and ties it up around his belt, while stuffing the rest in his pockets. When he's finished, he's confronted by Jaime and Carlos, the former of whom calls him a son of a bitch. This gets him to chase after them and they lure him down into the basement area, to the cistern. He puts two shells into the shotgun and

walks up to the cistern, where he's confronted by Carlos, Marcos, and Galvez, with the first two wielding spears. Jacinto is not at all threatened by this and prepares to pick them off, when Jaime comes in from his right and stabs him in the armpit with a spear. He recoils and yells in pain, and as Jaime joins his friends, his attempt to pull the spear out causes him to break it off. He rips open his shirt and pulls the rest of the spear out, then collapses to the floor. He crawls over to the shotgun, but Jaime stabs him in the right arm.

All four of them proceed to gang up on him, stabbing him repeatedly. He's forced to the edge of the pool and Carlos says, "Santi," before pushing him into the water. Jacinto sinks to the bottom due to the gold weighing him down, and he tries to remove it in order to make himself more buoyant. Santi appears to his left and he turns and looks as the ghost comes in, puts his arms around his neck, and drags him down, as Jacinto lets out a muffled scream. Both his air bubbles and the blood from

Santi's head wound rise up to the surface of the pool, as Carlos, Jaime, Galvez, and Marcos watch from the edge. They then walk away, with Carlos next tearfully putting the shotgun back in the hands of Casares' corpse, as well as placing his handkerchief back in his vest's breast pocket. He and Jaime leave, and we get the reprise of Casares' opening narration, as we see a montage of Santi standing above the pool, a shot of the rubble and Casares' now dead phonograph next to it, Jacinto

floating dead at the bottom of the pool, with the pictures he found of himself and his parents in the safe floating on the surface, and one last shot of the bomb. The movie ends on the orphans beginning the long walk to town, as Casares' ghost watches from within the orphanage, as he says that he is a ghost.

The music, composed by Javier Navarrete, who went on to score Pan's Labyrinth, for which he received an Oscar nomination, focuses mostly on the tragic and melancholic aspects of the story, opening with a sad string piece that's replayed during the ending, and also has a number of moments where it comes off as childish and mischievous, like when the kids are sneaking around and when Jaime and Marcos get Carlos in trouble. The scenes with Santi are scored with a number of eerie, unsettling sounds, some of which are so soft that you can just barely perceive them, but the tense scenes involving him, like when he's coming at Carlos in the hallway, is scored much more dramatically than you'd expect, somewhat lessening their scare factor, at least to me. Also, when you see the bomb come down in the flashback, the music comes off as rather epic in the way it builds and builds up to the point where it hits the ground, and there are some instances where the vintage Spanish music heard on the radio and phonographs become the soundtrack for certain scenes, such as how Dr. Casares' records can be heard playing during the orphans' climactic confrontation with Jacinto. But like I said, the score's focus is really on the emotion and heart of the story, rather than creepiness, and the ending credits leave off on that feeling with a piece that brings home that notion of the tragedy and strife you've just witnessed these characters go through, and makes you ponder what the future holds for them.

Guillermo del Toro has said that, along with Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone is his personal favorite of his work and, while I can't quite call it my absolute personal favorite of his work, it certainly is a well-done, effective film. It's well-shot and directed, the acting and characters are solid all-around, with special mention going to Fernando Tielve as Carlos, the setting is wonderfully isolated and very well-utilized in and of itself, there are some truly spooky scenes and unsettling images, the effects work is superlative all-around, especially the makeup effects and the realization of the ghostly Santi, the music score is quite good, and the narrative is a well-done marriage of a ghost story and a tale of the horrors of war, as seen through the eyes of children. There's really nothing bad I can say about it, other than it might not give you absolutely everything you'd expect or want from a ghost story, due to its priorities, but it's such a well-done movie all around that it really shouldn't matter.