Executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro, THE ORPHANAGE (EL ORFANATO) is a beautifully crafted, frightening and ultimately moving ghost story in which restless spirits provoke fear and solace in equal measures for the grieving members of the waking world. Punctuated by some of the finest scares of the movie year – or any movie year – director Juan Antonio Bayona has made a horror film that manages to be as balls-out scary as it is heartfelt and humane.
Everything about this latest triumph for Spanish genre cinema is of a high class. It has a gorgeously atmospheric coastal backdrop, complete with intimidating lighthouses and dark secrets buried within even darker caves. The soundtrack is an assured combination of nerve-rending bouts of silence, menacing sound design and orchestral beauty. It also showcases exceptional performances. Fernando Cava has probably the least showy role but excels as an ineffectual husband, while Geraldine Chaplin makes a welcome return to the screen as a quirky medium who joins a long, distinguished screen history of such characters in supernatural horror. All eyes, however, are on Belen Rueda, who dominates the film with a tour de force of emotion : hers is a wrenching performance rich with painful honesty.
THE ORPHANAGE inevitably has echoes of past movies in this genre, notably THE OTHERS and POLTERGEIST (with which it shares a disappearing child and a wacky medium), but never feels clichéd or hackneyed. Rueda returns to the orphanage in which she grew up with the aim of reopening it as a home for special needs children. Her own adopted son (Roger Princep) has no idea that the pills he takes on a daily basis are to keep away the worst symptoms of the HIV virus he carries. The lonely boy has imaginary friends but one of them, “Tomas”, somehow seems all too real. When Princep disappears without a trace and remains missing after months have passed, Rueda unearths the orphanage’s sinister history, notably the actions of a stern governess (Monsterrat Carulla) and the tragic demise of the disfigured “Tomas”.
From the dynamic title sequence – in which unspecified juvenile hands literally tear the screen away to unveil the credits – Bayona’s film seldom hit’s a false note. The director knows how to scare an audience without relying on ghost movie clichés or Asian horror-influenced frights. He also never loses sight of the story’s strong emotional undercurrent – the wrap-up surprises by offering an emotional resolution rather than a horror-centric one. Earlier allusions to PETER PAN resurface for climactic scenes that offer a sense of hope and comfort in the knowledge of an afterlife. The last scene, in which a key character finds a quiet reassurance within overwhelming grief, is particularly poignant and well realized.
Just as impressive is the film’s scare quotient. This is the kind of movie that builds such a persuasive aura of menace that even a moment involving nothing more elaborate than a shutting door manages to be terrifying. Bayona finds as much to fear in his external daylight scenes and brightly lit sequences within the orphanage as he does in the more conventional horror realms of dimly lit basements and oppressive caves.
The first appearance of the silent Tomas, clad in a sack-mask, chills the blood. One sudden death sequence reminiscent of a classic moment in the original FINAL DESTINATION packs a powerful jolt though it’s capped by the grimmest, most startling reviving-corpse shock since the “Sloth” victim stirred in SE7EN. There are quieter moments of spine-freezing, old-fashioned terror throughout, notably a scene in which Rueda talks openly and at length to her husband in bed…only for him to suddenly emerge from the bathroom where he’s been the whole time. THE ORPHANAGE also has the finest “look behind you!” scare in recent memory : a brilliantly shot game of “knock on wood” that takes a nightmarish turn.
The film boldly tackles the theme of child death and its avoidance of overt violence makes the few brief visceral moments – including a wince inducing torn fingernail – all the more horrifying. It’s already destined for a Hollywood remake (yawn!) and should be high on the list of any horror fan’s “must – see” movies.
The DVD includes a few featurettes about the making of the movie as well as Still Galleries, Marketing Campaign, Rehearsal Studio footage and more…..
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
