Film

The Devil's Backbone

Name: The Devil's Backbone
Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Horror, Thriller
Released: 2001
Cast: Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Íñigo Garcés

A ghost story that's really about the living. In the dying days of the Spanish Civil War, a boy is dropped at a crumbling orphanage haunted by something restless — and by the human cruelty simmering beneath its floors. Del Toro trades jump scares for dread and grief, patient and melancholy. For anyone who wants their horror to actually ache.

TMDb rating

7.3

If you liked this

Pan's Labyrinth2006

Del Toro's other Spanish Civil War fairy tale, and the fuller flowering of everything Devil's Backbone hints at — fascist violence pressed right against a child's fantasy world, gorgeous and merciless in equal measure.

But The violence is more explicit and the ending offers considerably less comfort than you might be hoping for.

The Orphanage2007

Produced by Del Toro and cut from similar cloth: a Spanish orphanage, a grieving mother, and a haunting that turns out to be about unfinished business rather than malice. Slow-building dread done with real craft.

But It leans harder into conventional jump scares and lands on a more sentimental, tear-jerking final note.

The Others2001

Nicole Kidman anchors this immaculate haunted-house film, set in the fog just after another war, where the dead and the living misread each other completely. A masterclass in withheld information.

But It's a colder, more clinical kind of scary — precise rather than the emotionally raw ache Del Toro goes for.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grave of the Fireflies1988

Same engine, no ghosts required: a child processing the horror of war through helplessness and loss. Del Toro's ghost is a metaphor for buried guilt; here the buried guilt gets no metaphor, just two starving children.

Often called the saddest animated film ever made, and it earns that reputation completely — a brother and sister surviving alone in the firebombed ruins of WWII Japan, told with unbearable tenderness.

But There is no supernatural comfort, no revenge, no catharsis — just grief, delivered without any mercy at all.

The Innocents1961

The gold standard of ambiguous ghost stories, adapted from Turn of the Screw, with children who may or may not be possessed and a governess who may or may not be losing her mind.

But Black-and-white and stagey by modern standards; the deliberate pace demands patience some horror fans won't have.

Crimson Peak2015

Del Toro turns fully gothic and lush here: ghosts as red as the clay beneath a crumbling English mansion, and a heroine who has to see past beauty to real rot underneath.

But It trades the earlier film's political weight for melodrama and swoony gothic romance, which some find shallow.

A Monster Calls2016

A boy conjures a monster to help him survive his mother's illness — grief processed through fantasy, much like Carlos and his ghost. Devastating, tender, and unafraid of real sorrow.

But No horror here at all, just raw emotional weight; go in braced to cry, not to be scared.

The Awakening2011no page yet

A sceptical ghost-hunter investigates a haunted boarding school in 1921 England, full of orphaned boys and buried wartime trauma. Atmospheric, foggy, and quietly clever about what a ghost story can actually mean.

But Less known and less polished than the others here, with a late twist some find overcomplicated.

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities2022

An anthology series where Del Toro curates other directors' short horror films — a good way to see his fingerprints, moral horror, monsters with reasons, spread across different hands and styles.

But Anthology format means uneven episodes, and not every entry hits as hard as his own feature work does.

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities poster

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio2022no page yet

Proof that Del Toro's obsessions — mortality, fascism, a child caught between innocence and violence — survive the jump to stop-motion animation. Set in Mussolini's Italy, it's darker than any Pinocchio you know.

But It's animated and marketed as family fare, which undersells just how bleak and political it gets underneath.

The Spirit of the Beehive1973

Made under Franco's own censors, this is the ghost story Del Toro's film is quietly answering — a girl using fantasy to process a country of fathers who won't talk about the war.

A hushed, hypnotic Spanish film about a girl's obsession with monsters while the adults around her stay silent about a war that has just ended. Genuinely eerie without a single special effect.

But Almost nothing happens by plot standards; it rewards patience and a taste for ambiguity over incident.

The Silence of Others2019

Del Toro's ghost wants his body found and his story told; this film is about real people still searching for relatives in unmarked graves, decades after the silence was legally enforced. The metaphor, made literal.

A quietly devastating documentary about Spaniards still digging up mass graves from the Civil War decades later, fighting amnesty laws that protected the killers. The real history behind Del Toro's fiction.

But It's a documentary about real atrocity and ongoing injustice — heavy, not entertainment in any conventional sense.