Directed by Guillermo del Toro
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Starz)
An isolated orphanage for boys in 1930s Spain is the setting for del Toro's ghost story. It's told from the point of view of new arrival Carlos, a ten-year-old boy who likes comic books and slugs. The orphanage is run by a kindly doctor and a nurse with an iron leg. The central character, though, is Jacinto, an older boy who personifies evil. He is driven by greed, lust and power. The orphanage is haunted by the ghost of a boy killed by Jacinto, a murky figure whose bones show through his skin and who moves about in a bubble of water. It could have worked just as well, in fact better, without the ghost which adds nothing to the story. The violence is graphic and often directed at small children, and again adds nothing to the overall story. Jacinto's motivations are poorly defined which is a fatal flaw for the character that essentially drives the film.
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