The Orphanage Movie Review1

The Orphanage/ El Orfanato The Orphanage is def­i­nitely one of the best Spanish films I’ve watched. And the funny thing, I’m actu­ally not much of a fan of the hor­ror genre. But in my eyes, The Orphanage is art. It mixes hor­ror with heart. The story revolves around a for­mer orphan­age. Laura, together with her hus­band, Carlos, and her adopted son, Simon, moves in to that orphan­age where she was brought up. Laura, together with her hus­band, decides to re-open the orphan­age to six new orphans around the loca­tion. Simon, who is HIV pos­i­tive, then claims that he has invis­i­ble friends, but Laura thinks it is just his wild imag­i­na­tion. At the open­ing party, Simon asks Laura to see the house of his “friend”, Tomas. Laura refuses, and Simon is upset. Simon dis­ap­pears dur­ing the party, and Laura comes to the deduc­tion that his ghost friends have taken him away. Laura then makes a police report, and also con­sults a para­psy­chol­o­gist. Drama con­tin­ues… This is the first time the direc­tor, Juan Antonio Bayona, is direct­ing a full fea­ture film. And I must say, it’s a pretty impres­sive debut. Bayona has cho­sen to shoot the film in an eerie way, and has cho­sen to let our imag­i­na­tions take over. The film starts off with a sim­ple scene of kids play­ing in a gar­den. We then see a care­taker pick­ing up a phone, and her walk­ing out to the gar­den to call out a girl Laura, as a fam­ily has decided to adopt her. We then hear the sound­track get­ting creepier and creepier, and as Laura shouts, “ I got you”, it turns to a black screen. It is a fan­tas­tic way to start the film, giv­ing the audi­ence a lit­tle dis­com­fort. Simple yet effec­tive. The open­ing credit sequence was bril­liantly designed, hav­ing old wall­pa­pers ripped off by orphans’ hands. And along with the sound­track, it estab­lishes the mood and theme of the whole film. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the cred­its gave me the creeps. The sound­track of The Orphanage is out­stand­ing, giv­ing dis­com­fort to the whole film. There is this par­tic­u­lar scene when Laura finds an old woman at her house with a dig­ging spade in the mid­dle of the night. With the use of high pitch music, it made the scene much more scarier. It reminds me of the famous Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho scene. The film main­tains its ten­sion through­out the film, with shots of creepy empty hall­ways, with the aid of its sound­track. Bayona has cho­sen to let our minds do the imag­i­na­tion rather than to show it to us. There is this scene in the cave where Simon is talk­ing to some­one, and is shin­ing his torch­light against the rocks. We see noth­ing at the rocks, but, we know, there is some­thing out there. All the empty hall­ways, the metal sounds in the house, we know the ghosts are out there, but we don’t see them. Unlike most B grade hor­ror films, which have weak plots and thrive on cheap scares, The Orphanage is an old-fashioned hor­ror film with heart. It accu­mu­lates ten­sion from the first minute to the end of the film, with burst of ten­sion at some parts. We can feel the sor­row of the film, the story about a mom doing every­thing she can to find her adopted son. One of the rea­sons why she is doing that is because of the fact that she was an orphan her­self. I love the twist of the story, and it just makes the view­ers shud­der with sym­pa­thy for the mother. Belén Rueda’s (Laura) act­ing was so con­vinc­ing that it made me feel for her. Laura relent­less pur­suit to find her son touched me. I’d say the best scene of the whole film was a long take for about a minute. Laura is play­ing a game with the ghosts, where she says,” one, two, three, touch on the wall”, and when she turns around, the ghosts around her approach­ing must freeze. We see the young Laura play­ing that in the first sequence too. This long take is held in a dark room, and every time Laura turns, we see ghosts of orphans clos­ing in on Laura. In our mind, we are won­der­ing when the ghosts will finally reach her. This scene is fan­tas­tic, and is def­i­nitely the scene to look out for. The Orphanage is a gen­uine hor­ror film, dis­turb­ing, pow­er­ful, yet has its soft and ten­der moments. It’s one of the few com­plete hor­ror films out there, and it’s def­i­nitely worth watch­ing. At least twice. – Foong Yan Qiu