I really should not need to explain how good of a director Guillermo Del Toro is to anyone reading this. Pan’s Labyrinth probably ranks somewhere among my top 25 films. I love Pacific Rim, Cronos, and Crimson Peak, and am heavily anticipating The Shape of Water when it releases later this year. However, I’ve often heard great things about The Devil’s Backbone, which I assumed to be in a similar vein to Pan’s Labyrinth, based on the Criterion cover alone. So for this week’s Fresh Eyes, I opted to have a look at The Devil’s Backbone, which has been begging to be taken off the shelf for some time now. I think I made a good decision.

Set during the tail end of the Spanish Civil War, the film centers around a young boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve), who gets dropped off at an orphanage by two soldiers, as his father died fighting in the war. He eventually finds a place among the other children, and learns about Santi (Junio Valverde), a child who lived in the orphanage and died under mysterious circumstances. A concurrent plotline involves Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) attempting to rob the couple running the orphanage, abusing the other orphans, and plotting the general downfall of the orphanage.