Visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro recently resurrected Frankenstein on the big screen. In many ways, it’s the perfect vehicle for the longtime horror master, who has always gravitated toward outwardly frightful characters who possess goodness and innocence deep down. One prime example is del Toro’s excellent, wildly overlooked third feature, The Devil’s Backbone.
More to the point, watching The Devil’s Backbone alongside Frankenstein will give horror fans and del Toro followers great insight into how he views his monstrous characters and ghoulish creations, treating them with tremendous compassion. Far from one-dimensional caricatures, del Toro has made a career out of making audiences care about his creatures, with The Devil’s Backbone providing a thematic throughline that has persisted until Frankenstein‘s revival.
What Is ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ About?
A deeply immersive period ghost story that defies genre conventions, The Devil’s Backbone (2001) is set in Spain in 1939 as the Spanish Civil War draws to a close. The story is set in a Spanish orphanage, where Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi) and his wife, Carmen (Marisa Paredes), hide a stash of gold reserved for the Republican treasury.
Fascist dictator Francisco Franco deploys troops to retrieve the gold, putting everyone on edge. With tensions high all around, the R-rated ghost movie introduces Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a 12-year-old boy unaware that his father has died, who is taken to the orphanage by caretaker Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega) and his fiancée, Conchita (Irene Visedo), and looked after there.
As Carlos adjusts to his surroundings, he befriends the other orphans, including bully Jaime (Íñigo Garcés) and Gálvez (Adrián Lamana). Carlos also begins experiencing strange visions, which the others tell him come from the ghost of an orphaned boy named Santi (Junio Valverde). One night, Jaime dares Carlos to go into the kitchen to get water. Upon entering the kitchen, Carlos hears a distant voice warning, “Many of you will die.”
Mortified beyond belief, Carlos storms out of the kitchen. The following night, Carlos encounters Santi alone, who appears as a pale apparition with a fatal head wound. Without spoiling the rest, Carlos forms a tender, touching, and wildly unexpected bond with Santi, who, despite appearing as a frightening ghost, shows far more benevolence than malevolence as he helps Carlos survive and understand the orphanage’s dark secrets.
‘The Devil’s Backbone’ Ranks Among del Toro’s Best Movies
Although it still hasn’t received the appreciation it deserves, The Devil’s Backbone ranks among Guillermo del Toro’s best movies. The way he sidesteps genre clichés, subverts audience expectations, and toys with how ghost stories are conceived shows a filmmaker in complete control of his craft.
At first, viewers fully anticipate a classic ghost story in which Santi haunts the orphanage and exacts revenge on those who wronged him. On the contrary, del Toro is much too intelligent for that. Instead, he completely flips the dynamic, making Santi a kindhearted spirit whose outward scariness is misunderstood. As viewers wait for Santi to act with evil intent, del Toro reminds us that the real threat is Franco’s incoming troops and the greed of those inside the orphanage protecting the stash of gold.
In the end, The Devil’s Backbone reveals itself to be an incredibly moving coming-of-age tale, in which Carlos finds solace in his bond with Santi. Meanwhile, Santi’s good-hearted redemption, rather than malicious revenge, allows a sense of closure to his unfortunate fate as he acts as an ally, not a threat, to Carlos. A profound tale of unlikely friendship in the guise of a ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone deserves to be mentioned among del Toro’s all-time best movies, not just as a standalone effort, but also for how it has informed the rest of his career ever since.
‘The Devil’s Backbone’ Establishes Guillermo del Toro’s Biggest Thematic Motif
Looking through Guillermo del Toro’s decorated filmography, here’s a filmmaker who consistently sides with his monsters, often showing as much compassion and adoration for them as his human protagonists. It wasn’t as apparent in his sophomore film, Mimic, but The Devil’s Backbone helped del Toro establish one of the most glaring thematic motifs of his career: sympathizing with the monster.
Following The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro adapted Mike Mignola’s comic book, Hellboy. Played perfectly by longtime del Toro favorite, Ron Perlman, Hellboy is a demonic antihero who appears rough, gruff, and terrifying on the outside, but has a soft, kitten-loving heart of gold on the inside. Once audiences get over the frightening facade of the character, they realize that Hellboy is just like them deep down. This allows viewers to overcome their fears, relate to, and identify with the so-called monster.
In arguably his most famous movie, Pan’s Labyrinth (also set in 1944 Spain), del Toro makes us care about the Faun (the incomparable Doug Jones). This mythical creature may appear scary, but it helps ferry Ofelia into the fantastic underworld. The best example of all, del Toro’s Best Picture-winning creature feature, The Shape of Water, turns a mutated fishman into a romantic protagonist who is impossible not to feel for by the end. Time and again, del Toro humanizes the inhuman, giving his creatures and monsters as high emotional stakes as his human characters.
And that brings us to Frankenstein. Given his thematic penchant for making audiences see a bit of themselves in his monsters, Frankenstein couldn’t be a more perfect, on-brand project for del Toro. As far as classic horror goes, few iconic characters are as sad and tragic as Frankenstein’s monster (Jacob Elordi), a physical patchwork of random body parts with the mental acuity of a child. It’s always been Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who is the overambitious villain driven by mania and self-achievement.
Dr. Frankenstein is responsible for his creation’s actions, giving del Toro ample opportunity to inspire sympathy for the monster and disdain for Frankenstein. It’s as if del Toro’s career was destined to arrive at this moment, with this classic monster movie, to reinforce his filmmaking mission from the beginning: bringing a little light to the darkness. The Devil’s Backbone is available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
