Guillermo Del Toro has been one of the most visionary directors for a long time and has since become more recognized with movies like Hellboy, Pacific Rim, and the Shape of Water, but his best works come from two movies that cover the Spanish civil war; Pan’s Labyrinth and the Devil’s Backbone. Pan’s Labyrinth is what most people consider his best movie, but its sibling film is often really overlooked.
The movie begins with a boy being taken to an orphanage in the middle of the desert, where he has a really hard time with the other kids and even encounters the ghost of an orphan who had died there. Just like with Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie has a lot of conflicting thoughts between the world of fantasy and the horrors of war. Whenever the ghost known as Santi shows up on screen, it’s at first made to have a feeling a dread when he gets closer, but as the movie goes on, you start to learn more about him and find that he’s misunderstood and stuck this way, not being able to communicate with others. His appearance is pretty interesting; since he drowned, there’s always blood floating above his scar and water light reflections always being around him.