The Devil's Backbone captivates first and foremost as a chilling ghost story, but ultimately as a crystallization of director Guillermo del Toro's personal themes that would reach their apotheosis in his later film Pam's Labyrinth (2006): a concern with children living in a war-torn world; villains who are more monster than human; and a deliberately skewed dichotomy between the worlds of fantasy and reality. Del Toro's storytelling acumen proves ferocious as he juggles multiple storylines without dropped or confusing any of them. There's a scene two-thirds in involving an explosion that completely redefines the direction of the story. A lesser filmmaker would have balked at it. But del Toro doesn't flinch. In doing so, a good ghost story becomes a great one.
8/10
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