I was originally planning to talk about Pan’s Labyrinth but to be honest it’s so well-known and acclaimed there isn’t much point making it the focus of any sort of review. Don’t get me wrong, I do love that film: I often cite it as one of the most immersive and spellbinding pieces of cinema in recent years but del Toro’s earlier feature, The Devil’s Backbone, is equally deserving of a mention. It’s not quite of the same calibre but there are plenty of similarities between the two and it’s outstanding enough in its own right to warrant the extra attention.
Both films are set during the Spanish civil war in the second half of the 1930s so as well as being effective supernatural chillers the stories have a definite historical background that compliments the main events: the superstition that pervaded Spanish culture at the time, not to mention the sensation of fear and unease among ordinary people, runs behind and parallel to the main plotline. The social and political upheaval adds context to what is already an effective and atmospheric gothic-style horror, making it a great ghost story but much more too.
The ‘ghost story’ aspect is respectable on its own, of course. The rendering of The One Who Sighs, a young boy who walks the corridors and the cellars of a home for young orphans, makes good use of special effects and cinematography to create a character who is as pitiable as he is frightening. There are plenty of things that go bump in the night and shadows hiding around corners but where this film, and its ‘spiritual sequel’, stray from the old formula for me is where the spiritual realm crosses further over into the human one.
It’s not just the protagonist who interacts with the supernatural beings here: the ghosts are not confined to hiding in the basement and making creepy noises. Maybe I haven’t seen enough supernatural films of this type but the way in which the narrative never denies the possibility that these manifestations are real, as some other similar movies are reluctant to do, makes it feel more convincing and chilling. It also blurs the line between the living and the dead and drawing dangers and threats from both sides of the divide, which felt refreshing and creepier as a result too. Initially the boys of the orphanage are scared of the ghost but in a clever twist the possibility emerges that what they should really be afraid of may be something of their own world. Again, much more shocking in some ways than what I expected.
I think it was a deliberate decision to place the premise of the film in a known historical context because it takes the events out of a nondescript haunted house and into a setting that, because of its grounding in a reality of the recent-ish past, feels closer to our own reality. Not quite ‘based on a true story’ but certainly one that feels more relevant to the real world. It may have worked even better in that sense if it had been set in the present day, but again there is I think a good reason why del Toro wrote this with that particular timeframe in mind.
This is where The Devil’s Backbone and of course Pan’s Labyrinth are more than horror films, albeit very well-executed horror films. They have a lot of social commentary woven in, offering frightening portrayals of supernatural beings and creatures then offering the possibility that human cruelty is more terrifying than anything the spiritual realm could throw at us. Ghosts and monsters can strike fear into anyone but a backdrop of warfare has as much, if not more, fear and death. The unexploded bomb that sits in the courtyard of the orphanage is a symbol of both a supernatural threat, in that the boys suspect it is still ticking away and has a dormant life of its own, and a more physical one in that the war and its destruction can spill over into the lives of innocent civilians.
I’m not a huge fan of ghost stories but partly because del Toro is so skilled at whipping up the atmosphere of mystery and foreboding and, more importantly for me, is adept at throwing new ideas into the mix The Devil’s Backbone is one of the best I’ve yet seen. The haunted house formula is getting old after decades of cinema squeezing every possibility out of it so it’s great to see that some film makers are able to breathe new life (or lack thereof) into a tired genre to produce something that is not only entertaining in the conventional hide-behind-the-sofa sense but also has a lot to say about human nature. If you enjoyed Pan’s Labyrinth I’m sure you’ll love this too: it is able to not only scare the living daylights out of you but has some deeper, more human messages that will stay with you for much longer.
