Some trendspotters see the next big thing for international cinema as a swing to the young generation of Mexican directors, post-Arturo Ripstein and post-post-Buñuel. Perhaps, but we have a ways to go when The Devil's Backbone, by Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Mimic), gets touted as a seminal film of the Mexican new wave. Del Toro is good at spooky atmosphere, and he's got a first-rate locale, an isolated, abysmally rundown hacienda baked under the hot, yellow Mexican sun that stands in for an orphanage. But the acting is clunky, and the story is straight-to-midnight-movie stunted and not very believable.

Why is it set during the Spanish Civil War? I have no idea. A 10-year-old boy, Carlos (Fernando Tielve), is brought to this odd orphanage that's run by a gothic couple, where an unexploded bomb dropped by a Fascist plane sits in the courtyard. Other characters include a ghost boy, Santi, who creeps about unhappily each night and provides a few genuine scares, and an evil, sadistic handyman, Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), against whom all the orphans finally revolt. The title? It has something to do with an abnormal growth on something fetus-like floating in a bottle. Gross! The distributors have packaged The Devil's Backbone as an arthouse picture. It plays far more like a Franco-North American spaghetti western. At the Avon.