The Devil's Backbone

365 Films

Entry #143

The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

It's always intrigued me how the term Horror movie has become much more expansive and wide-reaching than most other specific types of genre.  Horror movies can extend all the way into psychological thriller territory or be reigned in by the tropes of the slasher film, it encompasses everything.  Myself, never being much a fan of the goriest that the genre had to offer, tended to drift towards the quieter and sadder ghost stories offered up by the likes of Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is a fellow worthy entry which we will have to get to later).  It is with great regret that I admit to having missed The Devil's Backbone in it's initial release but I can at least say that I remember reading about it (I think).  I doubt it was something that would have announced itself on my radar but looking back, I was quite taken with the aforementioned Others so I'm having difficulty remembering why I didn't seek out like minded movies to accompany it.  If there's one thing we can be thankful to M. Night Shamalayan for, it is that the Sixth Sense made these kind of movies in vogue for a few years.  The natural cycle of horror then shifted into a wildly different direction and now we're stuck with a lot of crap that I won't care to mention at this particular juncture.  In any event,  catching up with The Devil's Backbone (probably around the time Pan's Labyrinth came out) I was immediately entranced by it.  Having revisited the film, I was struck by how concretely embedded some of the images have become in my brain.  The central one, for example, involving the defused bomb slammed and stuck directly into the middle of an isolated boys' orphanage playground is a typically genius Del Toro visual signature.  Fully exploited the emotional potential inherent in all ghost stories, The Devil's Backbone reveals itself to be far more interested in exposing the frayed nerves of a childhood cut short (particular through the consequences of an adult war) than a cheap jump scare with a cat on a garbage can.  The film begins with a monologue asking the question of "what is a ghost", and it's a testament to Mr. Del Toro's craft and his dedication to the particulars of cinematic story telling that the answer we get has little or nothing to do with the supernatural.  I have to admit I find myself going back and forth between Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone in order to answer the question of which is the best film by Guillermo Del Toro.  On days when I can't decide, I simply shrug my shoulders and smile grateful for having to make a choice between two such exquisite films.