TV & Film Review

The Devil's Backbone

Feature Film | Guillermo del Toro
By Eric Schneider

Part gothic chiller, part war drama, and part coming-of-age tale, The Devil’s Backbone is an inventive and compelling movie.

Following an unpleasant foray into Hollywood for the 1997 bug-centric thriller Mimic, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro decided to focus on a different kind of horror--the horror that humanity inflicts upon itself--with his 2001 ghost story, The Devil's Backbone. Set in Spain during its civil war of the late 1930s, the film follows a young boy, Carlos (Fernando Tielve), as he gets used to life at a remote orphanage. This isolated compound happens to have a creepy resident apparition with some unfinished business, leading Carlos to uncover the mystery of the ghostly boy's demise. Part gothic chiller, part war drama, and part coming-of-age tale, The Devil's Backbone is an inventive and compelling movie that deftly stitches its seemingly disparate narrative threads together into a satisfyingly macabre story with real emotional heft. Five years later, del Toro would revisit many of the same themes with Pan's Labyrinth, a massively lauded picture that would finally mark the director's international arrival as a filmmaker of the highest order.

TAGS: Apparitions, Boy Protagonist, Drama, Ghosts, Horror, Murder, Mystery, Orphans, Spain, Spanish Civil War, Thriller, War,

FACTS: Released: November 21, 2001; MPAA: R; Runtime: 106 Minutes; Cast: Eduardo Noriega, Fernando Tielve, Marisa Paredes, Federico Luppi; Producer: Pedro Almodóvar

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The Devil's Backbone trailer