Psycho's Movie Reviews #314: The Devil's Backbone (2001)

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. It was released to positive reviews.

Plot

Casares, a doctor, and his friend's 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 labelled "Santi," leading him to suspect that Jaime knows more than the other boys.

Casares sees 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.

Production

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

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". 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."

The name of the movie was taken from a scene showing jars of a liqueur the doctor owned, each containing spiced rum called “limbo water” preserving a fetus that died from spina bifida. The doctor said the drink was rumoured to cure impotence and was sold to fund the school.

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."

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

Release/Reception/Box Office

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." It also has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 stars out of 4 and compared it favourably to The Others, another ghost story released later in the same year. 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." 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."

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."

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. 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."

Budget $4.5million

Box Office $6.5million

My Review

First and foremost, I need to point out that this is NOT a horror story for kids or teens. I know that both versions of The Ring ("Ringu") and The Grudge ("Ju-On") are popular with teens these days, but the level of violence (particularly at the end) and sexuality in this Spanish movie make it a movie for parents to think at least twice before letting their teens view it.

Now, once you realize the adult nature of the movie, it is a great movie and well worth watching. Unlike the two movies listed above, this one is heavy on story and does not just consist of dead things hopping out at everyone to give you chills. Instead, it is a ghost story AND a story of greed and evil--almost like two different tales that are finally woven together at the end.

The acting is excellent (especially the kids at the orphanage), the writing is intelligent and the special effects, while not as omnipresent as in some movies, are excellent and really does the job of portraying a tortured ghost. I particularly thought the way the blood flowed from the skull of the ghost was a brilliant touch {Identical to how Thomas Sharpe's ghost (Crimson Peak) does too}, though I won't say more because I don't want to ruin the story. And, the movie has one of the best endings I've seen in a long time.

{SEE THE SIMILARITIES?}

Like the better-received Pan's Labyrinth that came later, The Devil's Backbone is a beautifully shot and extremely atmospheric ghost story with an innocent, imaginative child who retreats from the cruel world of adults at its core. There the similarities end. Where Pan's Labyrinth focused heavily on the fantastical, this film is instead subtle and traditional, featuring a vengeful spirit who appears almost secondary to the main thrust of the plot, involving the machinations of various characters in a remote boy's school during the Spanish civil war.

Del Toro hooks us from the very beginning with some outrageously good performances from the mostly child cast. I can't imagine a more layered, affecting turn other than the one given by Fernando Tielve, the boy who plays the protagonist Carlos; he's not alone however, as the rest of the actors playing the boarding school kids are exceptional. It's a distinctly visual movie, and it's clear that del Toro put painstaking effort into every composition, every sequence that occurs. The plot is original, the haunting itself refreshingly low key (little CGI on display here) and the film achieves its effect by allowing the story to develop naturally from the characters. Like The Orphanage, this Spanish ghost story puts most efforts from other cultures to shame.

Beautifully conceived and gripping film from the talented visual stylist director Guillermo de Toro. He's able to communicate the horrors of war and poverty as it effects others, especially children... this is truly at the heart of this film. It uses the ghost story elements to draw you in, but this is about the sad state of affairs that often yield from a land destroyed by greed and death. We see the ones effected here. Jacinto is the adult example of a child losing his way and only seeing gold bars as his means for escaping his melancholy. How that desperation effects those around him is shown to us vividly. 9.9/10 {Because I like Pan's Labyrinth that much better!}