The Devil's Backbone ("El espinazo del diablo"), directed by the mexican director Guillermo del Toro, released in 2001 is a Spanish Civil War ghost story about a twelve year old boy called Carols who arrives at an orphanage after his father is killed at war, he discovers the school is haunted and has many dark secrets that he alone must uncover. It was given the certification of 15+ due to scenes ranging from stabbing to a man taking a shot of rum from a jar containing a perserved mutated baby foetus, despite it's contraversial scenes however it was a succesful film, filmed with the high budget of an estimated $4,500,000 and has since become a world-wide cult film highly popular in countries such as Mexico, Spain and Britan. The narrative shares similar themes to Darkest Child, their is a singular child protaganist that is proceeds on a solitary journey into the supernatural where they are met with threaterning, yet luring children-
''What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.''
The reason why El espinazo del diablo was so popular world-wide is due to the vairity in it's production and distribution companies, it was produced by small independant mexican and spanish companies such as Tequila Gang and Canal+ España, this alowed a strong link between the two similar audiences it was primarly aimed at, however they had several distributers in many different countries, rangin from Japan to Germany (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256009/companycredits?ref_=tt_dt_co) In regards to Guillermo del Toro's other work is show clear similarites to his film Pan's Labrynith, in both their is the main narrative of a child exploring a supernatural and dangerous world in a backstory of war and death. Indeed del Torro created them both as siblings to each other, Pan's Labrynith as the sister and The Devil's Backbone as the masculine, brother film.
''It changed so much over the course of the year that I had to make a movie that structurally echoed Devil's Backbone, and that you could watch back to back. Devil's Backbone is the boy's movie. It's the brother movie. But Pan's Labyrinth is the sister movie, the female energy to that other one. I wanted to make it because fascism is definitely a male concern and a boy's game, so I wanted to oppose that with an 11-year-old girl's universe.''- Guillermo del Toro
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