El Orfanato (The Orphanage)
If your idea of a good scary movie is something along the lines of Saw or Hostel, don’t bother seeing El Orfanato (The Orphanage). It’s an all too rare intelligent horror film that eschews copious bloodletting and relies on imagination and suspense, not violence and gore, for its many scares. True, it’s not in the same league as the classics from which it draws obvious inspiration (including Don’t Look Now, The Innocents, Ringu, The Changeling, The Sixth Sense and, bizarrely, Peter Pan), but its still a stylish and chilling tale that provides a handful of genuine jump-out-of-your-skin moments and manages to be something unique in its own right.
To say too much about the plot would spoil it, suffice to say it involves an orphan called Laura (Belen Rueda) who brings her family back to the orphanage she grew up in which has since closed. She and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) have bought the orphanage and want to reopen it to house handicapped children. Unfortunately, her adopted seven year old son Simon (Roger Princep) starts speaking to a new invisible friend, and as anyone who has seen The Exorcist will know, invisible friends always mean trouble in a horror film.
Performances are all very good, not just from the leads but also the bit parts, including Montserrat Carulla’s creepy social worker Benigna and Geraldine Chaplin’s frankly terrifying medium Aurora. Incidentally, Chaplin provides the film with one of its most unsettling sequences: the obligatory séance which rises above the level of cliché because it’s viewed through spooky green night vision cam, (all the better for spotting menacing spooks apparently).
Of course its director Juan Antonia Bayona who should get the credit for such innovation, as should producer Guillermo Del Toro (director of Pan’s Labyrinth) who apparently had a great deal of creative input. Oscar Faura’s cinematography is also first rate, really capturing the darkness and shadow of both night and daytime scenes. Rarely have doorknobs and dolls looked so menacing, not to mention freaky sack masks. Elena Ruiz’s editing is spot on, as is the use of sound (Jordi Bosch) and music (Fernando Velasquez), two of the most vital weapons in a horror filmmaker’s arsenal.
But this isn’t just a scary story. Sergio G Sanchez’s screenplay also finds time to meditate on grief, loss, obsession and parental guilt. The nail-biting finale, which I won’t spoil, is simultaneously moving and pleasingly bleak, but to my mind not altogether unexpected, which is why I don’t think it will ever be regarded quite as highly as its contemporaries.
On a more serious note, from a Christian perspective the usual concerns apply, since the ghostly worldview presented by this film is obviously unscriptural. In case any readers are unaware of the Christian position on contacting the dead, the Bible is quite clear that we can’t because people either go to heaven or hell depending on whether they’ve accepted Jesus as saviour or not. Despite the charlatans, there are genuine mediums who are contacted by demons posing as dead relatives of those desperate for a message from the other side. What people who consult mediums fail to realise is that these demons go around collecting all kinds of information, then using that piece of truth, mix it with lies and deception. Therefore a belief in ghosts haunting the abode of the living is completely at odds with the Christian message.
In fairness, The Orphanage is doesn’t come off quite so badly in this respect since it doesn’t discuss Christianity, unlike some other films in the genre which actively set out to disprove it – The Others for instance. I’m not saying it’s wrong to enjoy a good ghost story, I’m simply pointing out that there is still potential for deception in presenting such a false worldview. With that note of caution, this is a must-see for those who love to be scared silly.
Simon Dillon, March 2008.
