El Orfanato

Orphanage, The (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2008)

THE SCOOP
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Plot: A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.

Genre: Drama/Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Awards: -
Runtime: 105min
Rating: PG for some disturbing content.

IN RETROSPECT
There are many reasons The Orphanage is one of the most chilling horror films ever made in recent years. Firstly, it's Spanish. Unless it’s a Pedro Almodovar picture, films from that country rarely make it here, let alone a horror movie. So what we get are fresh perspectives; no more Asian long-haired white figures that crawl under your bed, and no more Westerners getting their body parts chopped off by psychotic killers.

Secondly, it's produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the guy responsible for the impressive Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth two years ago. His creative influences in The Orphanage are not hard to detect, and is a major factor the film is such a hit. Thirdly, it's helmed by first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona who has no track record. This means there's no international pressure to meet standards and moreover, no one knows his filmmaking style, which adds a certain uncertainty to his first film, leaving viewers anticipating and guessing.

The Orphanage is well-crafted and it gives viewers a hell lot of goosebumps through a potent concoction of timely shock moments and long takes of eerie silence. Even a seasoned horror aficionado will find The Orphanage a challenge to sit through. It puts you in a state of high alert throughout the film, giving you genuine creeps here and there, and inflicting nasty shocks when you let your guard down. The Orphanage is more psychological than in-your-face terror; supernatural appearances in the film are kept to a minimal such that sightings become startlingly disturbing.

The ending is ultimately flawed after initially impressing ala The Sixth Sense. I feel that the film is a good five minutes too long. Such films work better with an open ending, one that puzzles viewers but is eventually more satisfying. But there's no doubt that The Orphanage is still one of the top draws of its genre. It's the experience that counts and yes, it haunts you for days.


SCORE: 8/10
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Recommendations: Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010), To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), The Visitor

Singapore's Most Prolific Film Blogger @ www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com

Last updated: 2010-04-22 09:57:28 by eternality_tan

The Orphanage: chilling and memorable

Although I'm a fan of Del Toro's work, I had never watched "The Orphanage."  I watched it recently and I was not disappointed: this film captures your attention from the first, seemingly innocent everyday scenes to the later supernatural terror. This is a picture that builds its intensity through suspense rather than shock tactics.  (Some films spoil the effect of shock with subtitles--this one doesn't.)

Laura and Carlos have moved back to the orphanage where Laura grew up. Their adopted son, Simon, seems to love the place, despite its resemblance to an ornate, decaying insane asylum. But his invisible friends lead him on a merry chase to a treasure hunt. When this "hunt" is repeated later in the story, it goes from merely strange to terribly intense.

Some of the best horror writing has similar foundations: a child's game can turn deadly. And what children don't fear, adults are afraid of. The suspense is tight in the scene where we watch the medium through a camera(a movie inside a movie, somehow more chilling than a direct viewing)as she "sees" the dying children in the orphanage.

I liked the palette of washed-out color, giving the sea and lighthouse the sense of a dream.

The movie has a satisfying ending. I won't say a happy ending. But the film closed with a sense of a story that was complete.


My grade for this film: an A!

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The Orphanage: Lost Boy

This Spanish horror flick is Peter Pan as written by the Brothers Grimm! It is a dark and moody reflection Barrie’s Lost Boys (the spooky children and the faceless mask), The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (Simon, who disappears and never ages…for obvious reasons), and the childless Wendy (though never explained, Laura and her husband are apparently sterile).

Director Juan Antonio Bayona channels the primitive and supernatural undercurrents of Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW creating suspense and chilling fear with sound, tight framing, and excellent acting. Chiaroscuro lighting and the eerie landscape of the renovated orphanage keep the viewer on edge. This is no splatterfest or shock-inducing horror film, THE ORPHANAGE carefully builds a sad and bleak tragedy….with ghosts.

I’m also reminded of THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE but this doesn’t carry the social commentary of Del Toro’s flick; this is a straightforward tragedy without a happy conclusion. This film would never be green lighted in the US because our tradition of storytelling is to water-down and censor the trauma and Disney-ize everything. I think this is a very good horror film that many will Overlook (Kubrick pun intended) because it isn’t Americanized for our mass consumption; no chainsaws, ice-picks, volcanic blood geysers, and cleavage-chicks gallivanting in blood soaked tank-tops. Do I sound cynical? Of course I do. I’m glad they didn’t include an English dub: Read the subtitles and be prepared for an unsettling and emotionally challenging ghost story. Final Grade: (B-)

Recommendations: The Birds, Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Funny Games

All reviews copyright Korova, Ltd. Visit Alex at his Home Theatre Blog, http://korovatheatrepresents.blogspot.com/

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)

A hold your breathe and die suspenseful little movie that was so effective in its scariness, and brilliantly acted, you couldn’t help but gasp at every turn. The definition of moody.

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Movie Review - The Orphanage

From the people who brought you Pan's Labyrinth! Well, sort of... You see, I was all thinking that Guillermo Del Toro, director of the aforementioned movie, had directed this film as well; I guess I missed the above poster, since it does clearly state "Guillermo Del Toro presents" and "Directed by J.A. Bayona" is right at the bottom. And what does "PRESENTS" actually mean, anyway? I guess it's not important now...

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, The Orphanage stars Belén Rueda as Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage that she grew up in before she was adopted. She now has a family - a rather busy husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), and an adopted son, Simón (Roger Princep), who we quickly learn is HIV+. Laura and Carlos have decided to move back to the old orphanage, fixing it up and turning it into a home for special children.


There's a haunting past to the orphanage that Laura is slowly forced to uncover, however, as Simón continues to see "imaginery" children that lead him to do strange things, including a hide-and-seek game where Simón uncovers the truth about his adoption and disease. Eventually, Simón goes missing at a party, and Laura and Carlos are thrown into a missing child case. Laura has had her own strange encounters at the house, though, and thinks that ghosts are playing a game with her. As she is led further and further into the orphanage's dark past, she also slowly unravels a mystery that happened at the orphanage right after she left.

The Orphanage's plot is not a new one - in fact, it represents just about every ghost story ever put on film. All of the same elements are there: a child who can see ghosts before the adults can, check; a knowing adult who has to uncover the truth, check; ominous house with more than its fair share of secrets, check; an unbeliever, check. While the story doesn't really distinguish itself from the rest of the ghost "genre," the execution of the scares and the tension does. The fact of the matter is, the story feels very grounded in reality. Laura and Carlos seem like a promising family, trying to do a good thing by accepting special needs children into their homes, and also adopting a child that has HIV. There's a certain realism that the small tidbits about the family's life outside of the haunting provide - it gives the characters a rounded feel, one that presents a greater sense of dread after Simón goes missing.


Ultimately, the film hinges on the strength of the relationship between Simón and Laura. To believe in Laura's faith that the ghosts have stolen Simón, or even trust that Laura is not crazy herself, we must feel like the love between Simón and Laura is real. Both Rueda and Princep bring about this relationship, sharing in bonding mother-son moments that express Laura's later obsession with finding Simón. It works because of the three-dimensional characters, but I couldn't help but think something was missing with Carlos. He is barely in the film, and when he is, he seems less than enthusiastic in believing Laura.

But what is it about the horror that makes this ghost story better than most? Part of it is the slow-moving camera. Everything about the pacing of the film feels surreal and sluggish, and long camera shots give the audience the opportunity to fall victim to quick scares that pop up at the last second. There's added tension that builds with long, linear shots. When zooming in, there is only one thing on the screen to look at, but there is always that tense moment where the audience becomes so distracted by what they're looking at that they're not thinking about the next moment. It's almost always effective, even when it is done deliberately with no scare at the climax.


But there is also something very haunting about the overall tone and atmosphere of the film. A scene in which a medium is investigating the house is very afflicting; night-vision cameras are set up, and the audience only gets a view of the screen, rather than following the medium. This is more ominous than the latter idea because we don't know what to expect. All we can see is what the camera sees. The medium picks up sounds on the recorder, childrens' voices that are crying and screaming in agony. It's a seat-gripping moment for sure, and while it ends only slightly more tense than where it began, that moment of dread sticks with the viewer through the rest of the movie.

In essence, The Orphanage rarely has any "real" scares. Most of the audience's fear lies in the tension of being lost in the house with no anchor of what might happen next. It's disorienting and quite different from other horror movies that force scares on the viewer rather than lightly hinting at them. There is very little in terms of a "slap-in-the-face" moment; instead, the audience can make of the scene what they will.


The past of the orphanage is really quite depressing, and all of the plot fits into place towards the end of the film. There is a reliance on recapping clues and foreshadowing from the beginning of the film which seems somewhat Saw-esque and too narrative, but it's needed to get the whole gist of the film. The end is definitely not what one would expect, but also somewhat rewarding, and especially in Laura's case, a woman who has been in a limbo of her own as to her son's whereabouts.


The only big problem I had with the film was the fact that Laura seemed very oblivious to what the ghosts wanted from her. It was obvious from the beginning to the audience, although it took Laura about 9 months to catch on. Also, tense moments frequently ended in a less-than-climactic position, one that I thought could have really amped up the fear more. Of course, the film did not want to rely on blatant pop-up scares, but a couple of freakier scenarios could have catapulted The Orphanage ahead of its brothers and sisters.

The fact that The Orphanage gives its own brand of fairy-tale storytelling reinforces its own subject matter. The hide-and-seek game is interesting in an adventurous sort of way, although only loosely played out. Especially creative was the use of the knock-knock (red light-green light) game when Laura attempts to find her son, although I was a little disappointed when the tension disappeared.


The Orphanage takes a lot of the obvious ghostly drama from other films and reinterprets it to entertaining, scary fun. While it's not the best haunting film ever made, it does have a lot going for it - emotional trauma is more important here than, say, shock scares. The later plot is very haunting, but the happy ending leaves a warming of the heart. We know, at the end, that one of the reasons why there was such a lack of climactic scares is because the ghosts were never meant to be scary. They were there to help Laura find her son - although she's probably wishing they stopped playing the game with her and just told her where he was in the first place. In the end, everything turns out how it was meant to be, and we are both happy and sad - it's been a thrilling ride, but the darkness that used to fill the movie is gone, leaving only despondent feelings.

Last updated: 2010-01-18 22:31:02 by user01

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

/</gispan style="font-style: italic;"/>/giThe Orphanage </span>is a visually and  aurally arresting film, from the producer of <span style="font-style: italic;">Pan's Labyrinth</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The  Devil's Backbone</span> (both superb films incidentally) we are treated  to a wonderful ghost story that is as terrifying as it is devastating.

Laura  brings her husband and adopted son to the orphanage where she grew up  in the hopes of starting up a home for special needs children.  During  their first nights at the orphanage Laura's son Simon meets some new  imaginary friends who like playing games. During a party for the opening  of the new home Simon disappears and his imaginary friends may not be  as imaginary as first thought as the secrets from the orphanage's past  are revealed.

I watched the film on Blu-ray and it is a stunning presentation, however some scenes  seemed to be a lot darker than I remember with limited shadow detail for  a high definition presentation.

The audio on the other hand is  flawless.  A completely expansive yet immersive experience. The score is  beautiful and subtle when it needs to be. The sound design is creepy  without being silly or over the top.

There are quite a few extras  on the release including deleted scenes, making of and a few  other short bits of behind the scenes information.

The Orphanage  is a brilliant film that leaves you with very mixed feelings.  It is a  ghost story that might not even have ghosts (an argument I have noted  elsewhere on the net), but it is certainly not for those looking for a  light hearted evenings viewing.

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