THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE

Name: THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE
Item: THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE
Author: Review

"Spooky Spanish Orphanage"

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE is a violent Spanish ghost story. It takes place at an orphanage on the outskirts of the hot Spanish plains. A boy named Carlos is left at the orphanage after his Communist father dies fighting. The headmistress, Carmen, who has a wooden leg, funnels bars of gold to the Communist revolutionaries, who leave their orphaned boys there. Carlos discovers that the ghost of a boy haunts the rundown buildings. Another boy, Jaime, is the prime suspect, but the most evil person turns out to be the merciless caretaker, Jacinto, who wants to get his hands on Carmen’s stash of gold. Everything comes to a violent, bloody end, but the villain gets his just desserts.

The violent twists in THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE become a little too lurid toward the end. Also, the ghosts in this movie are supposed to be real, though the director also uses them metaphorically in a lyrical narration that opens and closes the movie. In addition to its occult worldview, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE shows that both Carmen and the orphanage’s older doctor are humanists who don’t like Christian theism.

Content:

(OOO, HH, ABAB, CoCo, B, LLL, VVV, SS, N, A, D, M) Strong occult worldview with humanist, anti-Christian, Communist elements, plus some moral elements borrowed from a biblical worldview; 30 obscenities & no profanities; strong & extreme violence such as gruesome images of corpses & fetuses in jars, blood oozes from wounds, explosions, arson, implied executions, people shown drowning, & brutal murders, plus many scary scenes; depicted fornication; partial nudity & woman in nightgown; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, stealing & greed rebuked, but revenge is not rebuked.

More Detail:

THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE is a violent Spanish ghost story where greed is the villain.

Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, the movie takes place at an orphanage on the outskirts of the hot Spanish plains. (Apparently, the rain in Spain does not fall on the plains at all, or very little.) A young boy named Carlos is left at the orphanage after his Communist father dies in the war. The headmistress of the school, Carmen, has a wooden leg because of the war. She funnels bars of gold to the Communist revolutionaries, who leave their orphaned boys there. Carlos discovers that the ghost of a boy, who mysteriously vanished, haunts the rundown buildings. Another boy, Jaime, is the prime suspect, but the most evil person turns out to be the merciless caretaker, Jacinto, who wants to get his hands on Carmen’s stash of gold. Everything comes to a violent, bloody end, but the villain gets his just desserts.

The violent twists in THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE become a little too lurid and melodramatic toward the end. The acting by the children is very good, however. Also, the ghosts in this movie are supposed to be real, though the director also uses them metaphorically in a lyrical narration that opens and closes the movie. In addition to its occult worldview, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE shows that both Carmen and the orphanage’s older doctor are humanists who don’t like Christian theism. The doctor has an unrequited love for Carmen, but it is Jacinto who fornicates with Carmen so that he can steal the key that opens the vault where Carmen keeps the gold. Figuratively speaking, therefore, it is Carmen, the doctor and Jacinto who are the real ghosts inhabiting this setting, not the poor boy who died under mysterious circumstances.