You’ve probably heard of and maybe even seen Guillermo del Toro’s movies like Hellboy 1 & 2, Mimic, Blade II and maybe even the Oscar nominated Pan’s Labyrinth but you’ve probably never seen his film The Devil’s Backbone.  Guillermo says that Pan’s Labyrinth is the spiritual sequel to The Devil’s Backbone (which I can kind of seen his point but) it’s a far superior film than Pan’s.

The Devil’s Backboneis a ghost story set during the Spanish Civil War.  The civil war is a metaphor for what is happening in the film as well.  This film is a beautiful tale of children who are lost.

The film is beautifully shot, beautifully acted and beautifuly directed.  It’s a quite film that gets under your skin and unnerves you.  When I first saw this I had read a lot of hype about it.  I’m not a huge fan of ghost story movies, most fail to even garner a scare from me, but this one moved me on an emotional level.  It’s sad and haunting, and deeply affecting.  It gets into your heart and mind and it lives there.  I’ve only seen the film once and I’m still talking about it, so that has to say something for it.  Every other film on this list I’ve seen at least a dozen times.

If you thought The Sixth Sense was creepy and had visual cues to watch for, The Devil’s Backbone makes M. Night look like a kid out of college.  I can’t talk a lot about the film because it will ruin it for you so I’ll skip out on any more of the chatter and just tell you to go out and rent this today, don’t even rent it, just buy it.  As a side note a great double feature night would be The Devil’s Backbone paired with The Orphanage(which was produced by del Toro).

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