Movies Like The Devil's Backbone
If you loved The Devil's Backbone's Fantasy and Drama storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks

Pan's Labyrinth
In post–civil war Spain, 10-year-old Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to live under the control of her cruel stepfather. Drawn into a mysterious labyrinth, she meets a faun who reveals that she may be a lost princess from an underground kingdom. To return to her true father, she must complete a series of surreal and perilous tasks that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

Tigers Are Not Afraid
When her mother suddenly disappears with no one to care for her, young Estrella ends up on the street and joins a gang of children, triggering a dangerous and tragic chain of events.

Piggy
A bullied overweight teenager sees a glimpse of hope when her tormentors are brutally abducted by a mesmerizing stranger.

The Orphanage
A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, which used to be an orphanage, intent on reopening it. Before long, her son starts to communicate with a new invisible friend.

32 Malasana Street
Malasaña neighborhood, Madrid, Spain, 1976. While political turmoil ravages the streets all over the country, the Olmedo family arrives in the big city and settles into their new apartment. They soon discover that they are not the only ones roaming its corridors.

Volver
Three generations of women deal with family secrets while surviving the east wind, fire, insanity, superstition, lies and even death.

The Photographer of Mauthausen
Spanish photographer Francesc Boix, imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, works in the SS Photographic Service. Between 1943 and 1945, he hides, with the help of other prisoners, thousands of negatives, with the purpose of showing the freed world the atrocities committed by the Nazis, exhaustively documented. He will be a key witness during the Nuremberg Trials.

Undercover
Basque Country, Spain, late nineties. A young policewoman manages to infiltrate the ruthless terrorist gang ETA.
More Movies Like The Devil's Backbone

Operation Ogre
Spain, 1973. Dictator Francisco Franco has ruled the country since 1939 with an iron fist; but he is now a very old and sick man. The future of the weakened regime is in danger. Admiral Carrero Blanco is his natural successor. The Basque terrorist gang ETA decides that he must die to prevent the dictatorship from continuing.

For Whom the Bell Tolls
Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan—who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era—has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress.

The Skin I Live In
A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.

Butterfly
The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.

Eli
A boy named Eli with a rare autoimmune disorder is confined to a special experimental clinic for his treatment. He soon begins experiencing supernatural forces, turning the supposedly safe facility into a haunted prison for him and his fellow patients.

The 13 Roses
True story of thirteen totally normal young women that suffered harsh questioning and were put in prison under made up charges of helping the rebellion against Franco back in the 1940s. Despite of their innocence, the thirteen were soon executed without even a trace of evidence of any wrong doing.

Parallel Mothers
Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

Bird Box Barcelona
After a mysterious force decimates the world’s population, Sebastian must navigate his own survival journey through the desolate streets of Barcelona. As he forms uneasy alliances with other survivors and they try to escape the city, an unexpected and even more sinister threat grows.

Goodbye
Seville, Spain. Juan Santos, a convicted petty criminal, gets out of jail for a day to celebrate with Triana, his wife, the first communion of their daughter Estrella.

The Pit and the Pendulum
In the sixteenth century, Francis Barnard travels to Spain to clarify the strange circumstances of his sister's death after she had married the son of a cruel Spanish Inquisitor.

Ghost Story
Four successful elderly gentlemen, members of the Chowder Society, share a gruesome, 50-year-old secret. When one of Edward Wanderley's twin sons dies in a bizarre accident, the group begins to see a pattern of frightening events developing.

Sister Death
Spain, 1949. Narcisa, a novice, arrives at an old convent, converted into a girls' school, to work as a teacher.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Devil's Backbone (2001): Fantasy and Drama themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of The Devil's Backbone.
See full details for The Devil's Backbone (2001)