Horror movies don't usually make it into the Toronto International Film Festival, except in the deliberately trashy Midnight Madness program.

So you sense that Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, which did play in the mainstream festival last fall, is a cut above -- perhaps more stylish, more mature, more serious than most horror movies.

Indeed it is. It might even be worth getting rid of the "horror" genre tag, too, even though the film features a macabre, fly-covered, rotted-flesh ghost and a lot of bloodshed.

The setting is a good clue. The film, which opens today for a week at the Royal Cinema before moving over to the Paradise Cinema for a week, is plunked down in an isolated school orphanage on a desert plain in Spain during the late 1930s.

The country is being ravaged by a war between Franco's Nazi-backed fascists, who would soon be victorious, and the leftist Republicans, whose forces are crumbling despite the International Brigade.

There is even a scene in the movie in which fascists murder international POWs, including six Canadians. Del Toro, who co-wrote as well as skillfully directed, is willing to position himself politically.

The orphanage is populated with the sons of dead Republicans, including one naive newcomer (Fernando Tielve), who will prove to be the catalyst in unlocking a terrible mystery: Who is the child ghost?

The other boys know the ghost exists and they're scared witless, despite the posturing of the bully (Inigo Garces). The adults in the orphanage have other preoccupations. The one-legged proprietor (Marisa Paredes) is worried about the survival of the orphanage and her sex life with the young-stud handyman (Eduardo Noriega). He is obsessed with stealing her gold bars. The kindly professor (Federico Luppi) is obsessed with the proprietor, even though he knows she has sex with his loved one. Meanwhile, the cook (Irene Visedo) is obsessively in love with the handyman.

The machinations of the adults, the in-fighting between the kids, the presence of the ghost, the threatened intrusion of the war (including an unexploded bomb dropped into the courtyard) and the deprivations they all face, mix into a steaming witches brew.

And the cauldron is about to boil over.

It's great fun when it does, and high Gothic tragedy too. Del Toro, a Mexican known for the equally stylish comic-horror romp Cronos, is excellent at blending the imagery of spare European drama with the extravagant special effects of horror. It makes for a sometimes poignant, yet visceral experience and can also be understood on a metaphorical level.

War and horror are not far apart. The Devil's Backbone does not need to be seen only on the literal plane. It's that smart, and that entertaining.

(This film is rated R)

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