Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
Farm-Fresh balanceYMMVTransmit blueRadarWikEd fancyquotesQuotes • (Emoticon happyFunnyHeartHeartwarmingSilk award star gold 3Awesome) • RefridgeratorFridgeGroupCharactersScript editFanfic RecsSkull0Nightmare FuelRsz 1rsz 2rsz 1shout-out iconShout OutMagnifierPlotGota iconoTear JerkerBug-silkHeadscratchersHelpTriviaWMGFilmRoll-smallRecapRainbowHo YayPhoto linkImage LinksNyan-Cat-OriginalMemesHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconicLibrary science symbol SourceSetting
File:The-devils-backbone-1.jpg

1939, Spain.

It is the Spanish Civil War. Casares and Carmen operate a small orphanage in a remote part of Spain, along with the groundskeeper Jacinto and a teacher, Conchita. Casares and Carmen keep a large cache of gold to help support the treasury of the Republican loyalists, making this remote site a frequent target of Franco's troops; an unexploded bomb waits to be defused in the orphanage's courtyard.

When a small boy named Carlos arrives there, he believes that he is only staying until his father returns from the war, unaware that his father is already dead, and he is to stay at the orphanage indefinitely. However, Carlos is about to learn that more than the living dwell here, as he starts seeing an apparition he cannot explain, and hears tales of a boy named Santi who disappeared the day the bomb showed up.

The Devil's Backbone (Spanish title: El espinazo del diablo) is a 2001 Mexican/Spanish Horror Film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. It stars Fernando Tielve, Íñigo Garcés, and Eduardo Noriega. del Toro has stated on the DVD that, along with Hellboy, this was his most personal project.


The Devil's Backbone contains examples of:[]

  • Black Eyes of Crazy/Creepy Child/Looks Like Cesare/Undead Child: Santi.
  • Boarding School of Horrors
  • Book Ends: The film begins and ends with the dead Cesare's musing on the nature of ghosts.
  • Chekhov's Lecture: Who knew that learning how prehistoric hunters took down larger prey would come in handy later?
  • Children Are Innocent: Deconstructed. While the orphans like most of the things children like, they are a complex bunch, and ultimately prove quite capable of taking down Jacinto.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Santi.
  • Death by Irony: After being thrown into the pool beneath the orphanage and dragged down by Santi, Jacinto is weighted down by the bars of gold in his pockets — the treasure he's spent years searching for.
  • Downer Ending: The teachers are dead, and the children have no choice but to venture out into the desert for help — where they'll most likely die as well, forgotten by all.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: One class of children with spears vs. one adult bad guy.
  • Genre Savvy: Unlike characters in most Hollywood ghost stories, it actually occurs to Carlos to simply ask the ghost what it is he wants. He wants Jacinto.
  • Ghostly Goals: Santi just wants his murder uncovered.
  • Hard Head: Averted.
  • Hot for Student: The primary villain has been having an affair with his principal since he was barely a teenager.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: Principal Carmen.
  • Orphanage of Fear
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Santi is caught in an existential loop until he can avenge his death.
    • According to Word of God on the (American release) DVD commentary, he is still in an existential loop after the end of the film. Also, the opening narration poses the question, what is a ghost? and one of the following lines suggests an insect trapped in amber. So presumably, all ghosts exist in that way.
  • People Jars: Pickled fetuses with the titular deformity[1].
  • Precocious Crush: One of the students has a wholesome crush on his teacher, but the villain had a less-than-wholesome crush on his own teacher when he was a student.
  • Saving the Orphanage
  • Undeath Always Ends: Averted.
  1. The condition is actually called spina bifida. It wasn't properly understood in the medical world until the mid- to late '30s. Despite it having a real, physical cause, in small Spanish towns it was still considered a sign from God that the children were not meant to live or that their parents had some grave sin on their souls. Hence the name, devil's backbone.
Advertisement