The Devil's Backbone

The Devil's Backbone
Original Spanish-language poster
Directed by	Guillermo del Toro
Written by	Guillermo del Toro David Muñoz Antonio Trashorras
Produced by	Agustín Almodóvar Bertha Navarro
Starring	Marisa Paredes Eduardo Noriega Federico Luppi Fernando Tielve Íñigo Garcés
Narrated by	Federico Luppi
Cinematography	Guillermo Navarro
Edited by	Luis De La Madrid
Music by	Javier Navarrete
Production companies	Canal+ España Tequila Gang Sogepaq Anhelo Producciones El Deseo
Distributed by	Warner Sogefilms A.I.E. (Spain)
Release date	20 April 2001 (2001-04-20) (Spain)
Running time	108 minutes[1][2]
Countries	Spain Mexico
Language	Spanish
Budget	US$4.5 million
Box office	US$6.5 million

The Devil's Backbone (Spanish: El espinazo del diablo) is a 2001 gothic horror film directed by Guillermo del Toro, and written by del Toro, David Muñoz, and Antonio Trashorras.

The film is set in Spain, 1939, during the final year of the Spanish Civil War. The film was released to positive reviews.

Plot[]

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (December 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Casares and his wife Carmen operate a small home for orphans in a remote part of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Helping the couple with the orphanage are Jacinto, the groundskeeper, and his fiancée Conchita, a teacher. Casares and Carmen support the Republican loyalists, and are hiding a large cache of gold being used to back the Republican treasury; the orphanage has also been subject to attacks from Francisco Franco's troops, and an inert bomb sits in the courtyard.

One day, an orphan named Carlos arrives with Ayala and Domínguez, two loyalists, who explain that Carlos’ father died during the war. Casares and Carmen take him in, and he soon strikes up a friendship with Jaime, the orphanage bully, as well as Galvez and Owl. However, Carlos soon begins having visions of a mysterious entity, and hears stories about a child named Santi who went missing on the day the bomb was dropped in the courtyard. On his first night at the orphanage, Carlos is dared by Jaime to sneak to the kitchen for water, who is then dared by Carlos to accompany him. The boys reach the kitchen, but Jaime sneaks back to the dormitory, leaving Carlos alone. Carlos hears a whisper from an unknown source, telling him that "many of you will die." Frightened, Carlos rushes outside, but is caught by Jacinto. The next morning, Casares demands that Carlos give up any accomplices who snuck out with him the previous night, but Carlos refuses to rat Jaime out, and takes the blame. Carlos further solidifies his friendship with Jaime after rescuing him from a cistern.

Jacinto knows of the gold hidden at the orphanage, and uses his affair with Carmen as an opportunity to take her keys and search the building for the treasure. That night, the boys hear strange noises from what they believe to be a ghost, and Carlos decides to investigate. He sneaks out, and encounters a pale figure of a young boy with blood flowing upwards from a wound in his head, which causes him to run back into the building. Later, after flipping through Jaime's sketchbook, Carlos finds a drawing of a ghostly figure labeled "Santi," leading him to suspect that Jaime knows more than the other boys.

Casares receives news that Ayala has been captured by the nationalists. Fearing Ayala will soon be tortured into revealing the gold’s location at the orphanage, he convinces Carmen that they must evacuate the children immediately. Jacinto overhears the conversation and confronts Carmen, demanding the stash of gold and crassly bringing up their affair in front of Casares. Enraged, Casares points a gun at Jacinto and forces him to leave.

As the orphans and faculty prepare to leave, Conchita discovers Jacinto pouring gasoline around the kitchen, in which he had also placed numerous other cans of fuel. She threatens him with a gun, and shoots him in the arm when he mocks her, causing a furious Jacinto to start a fire before fleeing the building. Carmen and fellow teacher Alma attempt to put out the fire, but fail to prevent an explosion; Alma is killed by the blast, as are several of the children. Casares finds a mortally wounded Carmen inside the building, and tearfully stays with her as she dies. As Casares remains in the charred orphanage with the surviving children, he arms himself and awaits Jacinto's return.

The following night, Jaime reveals to Carlos the details of Santi's disappearance: Jaime and Santi had been collecting slugs at the cistern, when they spotted Jacinto attempting to open the safe where the gold was kept. Jaime managed to escape, but Jacinto cornered Santi and attempted to threaten him into keeping silent. In anger, Jacinto shoved Santi against a stone wall, giving him a severe head injury and sending him into shock. A panicked Jacinto then tied stones to Santi before sinking his body in the cistern. A terrified Jaime then ran into the courtyard, only to have the bomb land several feet from him moments later.

Jaime insists that he is no longer scared of Jacinto, and will kill him if he returns. Conchita, having survived the explosion, attempts to walk to the nearest town for help when she encounters Jacinto and two associates driving back to the orphanage to claim the gold. Jacinto threatens her with a knife, telling her to apologize for shooting him, but she insults him instead, and he stabs her to death.

Carlos has one more encounter with Santi's ghost, who he is no longer afraid of after hearing the circumstances of his death. The ghost quietly demands that Carlos bring Jacinto to him.

Eventually, Casares dies of his injuries as Jacinto and his associates reach the orphanage and imprison the orphans while they search for the gold. The two other men eventually grow impatient and leave, but Jacinto soon uncovers the stash. The orphans know that Jacinto will kill them once he finds the gold, but Jaime manages to encourage them to fight back. The children fashion weapons from sharpened sticks and broken glass, and attack Jacinto in the cellar, stabbing him multiple times and pushing him into the cistern where he had dumped Santi's body. Jacinto attempts to escape, but is weighed down by the gold before Santi's ghost appears from the depths and drags Jacinto to his death.

As the remaining children leave the orphanage and head to town, Casares' ghost watches them from the doorway.

Cast[]

• Fernando Tielve as Carlos, an orphan. He is described by del Toro in the DVD commentary as a force of innocence. Tielve had originally auditioned as an extra before del Toro decided to cast him as the lead. This was his film debut. Both Tielve and his co-star Iñigo Garcés had cameos as guerrilla soldiers in Pan's Labyrinth.
• Íñigo Garcés as Jaime, the orphanage bully who later befriends Carlos.
• Eduardo Noriega as Jacinto, the caretaker.
• Marisa Paredes as Carmen, the administrator of the orphanage.
• Federico Luppi as Dr. Casares, the orphanage doctor.
•  [es] as Santi, an orphan who becomes a ghost.
• Irene Visedo as Conchita, Jacinto's fiancée.

Production[]

This section needs expansion. You can help by . (October 2015)

It was independently produced by Agustín Almodóvar as an international co-production between Spain and Mexico, and was filmed in Madrid.^[3]

Del Toro wrote the first draft before writing his debut film Cronos. This "very different" version was set in the Mexican Revolution and focused not on a child's ghost but a "Christ with three arms".^[4] According to del Toro, and as drawn in his notebooks, there were many iterations of the story, some of which included antagonists who were a "doddering ... old man with a needle," a "desiccated" ghost with black eyes as a caretaker (instead of the living Jacinto who terrorizes the orphans), and "beings who are red from head to foot."^[5]

As to motivation for the villain, according to the actor who portrayed him (Eduardo Noriega), Jacinto "suffered a lot when he was a child at this orphanage. Somebody probably treated him wickedly: this is his heritage. And then there is the brutalizing effect of the War." Noriega further notes that "What Guillermo did was to write a biography of Jacinto (which went into Jacinto's parents, what they did in life, and more) and gave it to me."^[6]

DDT Studios in Barcelona created the final version of the crying ghost (victim and avenger) Santi, with his temple that resembled cracked, aged porcelain.^[5]

Reception[]

The response was overwhelmingly positive, though it did not receive the critical success that Pan's Labyrinth would in 2006. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 92% rating based on 119 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory."^[7] It also has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[8]

Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 stars out of 4 and compared it favorably to The Others, another ghost story released later in the same year.^[9] Christopher Varney, of Film Threat, claimed: "That 'The Devil's Backbone' makes any sense at all – with its many, swirling plotlines – seems like a little wonder."^{[citation needed]} A. O. Scott, of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, and claimed that "The director, Guillermo del Toro, balances dread with tenderness, and refracts the terror and sadness of the time through the eyes of a young boy, who only half-understands what he is witnessing."^[10] The film has been described as a humanist ghost story.^[11]

Steve Biodrowski from Cinefantastique Online described the film as "rich in texture, characterization and themes. Besides being genuinely creepy, it is also surprisingly moving. It is, quite probably (and this is not a back-handed compliment) the saddest horror movie ever made." He also praised the performances as well as the special effects, which he declared as "some of the best ever seen, easily matching work from the best US facilities; in fact, in at least one way they are even better."^[12][13]

The film was ranked at number 61 on Bravo's list 100 Scariest Movie Moments for its various scenes in which the ghost is seen.^[14] Bloody Disgusting ranked the film at number 18 in their list Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade, with the article calling the film "elegant and deeply-felt... it’s alternately a gut-wrenching portrait of childhood in a time of war and a skin-crawling, evocative nightmare."^[15]

See also[]

• List of Spanish films of 2001
• List of ghost films

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• The Devil's Backbone at IMDb
• The Devil's Backbone at AllMovie
• The Devil's Backbone at Box Office Mojo