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The Orphanage
Some things never change, like the scary properties of an old dark house and things that go bump in the night. American horror seems transfixed by graphic sadism right now, but the acclaimed Spanish chiller "El Orfanato" harks back to an older tradition of psychological scares epitomized by classics like The Innocents, The Haunting, and Cat People. First-time director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G Sanchez make it as a point of honor to take classic horror movie talismans - dark caves, lighthouses and cellars - and milk them for suspense as if they've never been milked before. It gives this otherwise deadly serious movie a playful aspect� We're invited to follow the clues - including an ornate bronze key - in Bayona's own artfully constructed game of treasure hunt. Laura (Belen Rueda) and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) have moved into an old building near the sea, The Orphanage that was Laura's childhood home before she was adopted. They plan to fix the place up and open a facility for disabled children. In the meantime, their own adopted son Simon (Roger Princep) is having no trouble making new friends. The only problem is, his playmates don't exist. Laura humors him, but she becomes increasingly uneasy when Simon's imaginary friends coax him into an elaborate treasure hunt. The clues lead straight to documentation that he too is adopted, and HIV positive. Soon afterwards, Simon disappears without a trace.
On one level, Bayona's movie works as a psychological portrait of trauma and grief - vividly realized in Rueda's worn, frantic performance. She comes to believe the house is haunted, and that Simon is trying to communicate with her, kidnapped by his friends - ghosts from a tragedy buried in her own past. The film alludes obliquely to Peter Pan, and we realize it's not just the "lost boy" Laura seeks, but her own lost childhood. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), the movie may harbour its own secret political subtext. Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone was set in an orphanage caught in the crossfire of the civil war, and when Geraldine Chaplin shows up here as a parapsychologist intent on raising the dead, she trails her own history of collaborations with director Carlos Saura, a series of allegories targeting the Franco regime. Thin and pale, black eyeliner pinpointing her big round eyes, there's something a bit spectral about Chaplin herself, but Bayona isn't out to debunk this ghost-buster; what's creepy about the character is that she intuitively understands Laura better than her own husband does. "Seeing is not believing," she instructs her. "It's the other way round."
Bayona's biggest concession to contemporary shlock is an anonymous child in a Victorian smock with a crudely daubed cloth hood pulled over his head, a do-it-yourself Halloween bogey-boy tailored for anyone's favorite worst nightmares. The movie also delivers one heart-stopping jolt you would need second sight to see coming. Like the old school horror films it resembles, The Orphanage taps into a deeper reservoir of dread and sorrow; it's the kind of low voltage chiller that you can't shake off. Tom Charity 
More information about The Orphanage » Critics' Reviews
An extraordinary performance by Belén Rueda (The Sea Inside) is the beating heart and tortured soul of The... read more on www.timeout.com Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
Nigel Floyd, Time Out