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A Passion For Horror
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The Orphanage (2007)(a.ka. El
Orfanato)
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
The
central character is a thirty-seven-year-old woman called Laura. Laura and Carlos seem to be a well matched and loving couple. They are also good parents and dote on Simon, who is, it has to be said, quite a cute kid. Sadly, however, the viewer learns all too soon that Simon's future is very limited because he suffers from congenital HIV. Up until they moved into the orphanage Laura and Carlos have successfully shielded their son from any knowledge of his illness, along with the fact that he is adopted.
Later that night Laura is woken by banging coming from outside, in one of the outbuildings that appears to have once been a bakery. When Laura goes to investigate the cause of the commotion she discovers Benigna has returned and it is she who is causing all of the noise. The sight of Benigna with a shovel in her hand gives Laura gets quite a fright, but before she can challenge the intruder Beniga runs off into the night. Not long after
this Simon has a confrontation with his mother and tells Laura and Carlos sit down and talk things through with Simon and their words seem to effectively pacify the situation. More trouble lies ahead though and Simon disappears during a party held at the house. It appears at first that Benigna may have taken him, but a distraught Laura soon begins to realize that her son's invisible playmates may not have been as imaginary as she thought, and that they might be playing some sort of game with her, with Simon as the prize. Over nine months later, and with still no sign of Simon, Laura has given up on the police, and turns instead to a team of psychic investigators. The scene where the team begin their investigation at the old orphanage is rather chilling and reminds me to some extent of the film Poltergeist. As in Poltergeist, the investigative team comprises of a psychic medium and some scientists who monitor the situation via all their technical paraphernalia.
Laura accepts the situation at face value, and who can blame her? These guys are obviously the real deal and they know what they are doing. Carlos, on the other hand, remains sceptical and, suspecting trickery, he tells Aurora and her team to leave. While continuing her search for her son Laura discovers the remains of several dead children hidden in the outbuilding that Benigna had been banging about in. Simon is not among them, but Carlos has had enough and decides that he and Laura should leave and when Laura refuses to go with him Carlos leaves without her. Left to her own
devices, Laura does her best to play the children's The Orphanage is a great film. The cast are impeccable and the atmosphere throughout the film is very spooky. Talking about spooky, if you decide to watch the film keep an eye out for the kid whose face is masked by a sack. It looks like something that might have been a hand-me-down from Jason Voorhees, and just the sight of the kid standing there wearing it is enough to send a few shivers down the spine.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this
review, subtitles are not everyone's cup of tea, but I have got to say
that The Orphanage is such a well-presented and creepy film that
even if Hollywood does decide to do a remake of it at some point, I doubt
very much that it could every be able to compare with the original.
Director Juan Antonia Bayona has got it right first time around and it
never pays to mess with perfection.
CAST Belen Rueda ...
Laura Mabel Rivera ...
Pilar DVD Information:
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The
Orphanage is a Spanish Horror film and it is, in my opinion
anyway, much better than a lot of the horrors that come out of
Hollywood. The only thing that might put some viewers off the film is the
use of subtitles. I don't have a problem with subtitles and so the running
commentary at the bottom of the screen did not bother me. My wife, on the
other hand, hates films that have subtitles and often refuses to watch
them. She watched The Orphanage all the way through though, and
after it was finished even said what a good film it is.
She and her husband,
Carlos, who is a doctor, buy an old house on the Spanish coast and move
into it with their adopted son, Simon. The house has been derelict for
quite some time, but thirty years ago it was an orphanage and the place
where Laura, an orphan herself, spent much of her
childhood.
The viewer first learns
of Simon's illness when an old woman appears at Laura's door. Her name is
Benigna; she claims to be a social worker and even has Simon's case notes
with her. Something does not seem right about the old girl though, and it
is not long before Laura smells a rat and insists that Benigna leaves.
her that he knows that
he is going to die. He also knows that she is not his real mother and
accuses her of lying to him. Laura and Carlos presume that Simon must have
stumbled across his case notes, which Laura locked in a drawer after
Benigna left. Simon insists, however, that he was given the information by
his invisible friends. 
The medium's name is
Aurora and after she enters a trance-like state she succeeds in contacting
the spirits of several dead children and her colleague's equipment
succeeds in picking up and recording their voices.
game, hoping that in the
end the trail of clues that they have left her will lead her to
Simon.
The Orphanage relies
more on a dark atmosphere for its frights and there is not an awful lot of
gore on offer, so if blood and guts are not your thing there is little
here that will put you off your lunch. The only possible exception being
the scene where Benigna comes off second best in an argument with a moving
bus. She would never have won any beauty contests to begin with, but with
her jaw hanging off she looks like someone broke an ugly-stick over her
head and then just kept on beating.