El Orfanato (2007)

Before I write this review, I must post a disclaimer that horror movies hardly ever make me clutch the armrests, curl up in my seat and cause my heart rate to accelerate. And they certainly never make me cry like a little bitch. I was still trying to compose myself after the credits.

It is a creepy ghost story, and it scares you by tapping into the most innate fears a person has – paranormal, losing a child, the noises in the basement. There is very little gore in the film. Instead, director Juan Antonio Bayona uses simpler images such as a tiny, silent child with a sac mask over their head creeping down the hallway to scare the bejesus out of you. It is not at all cheesy or overdramatic like most horror films (especially a lot of Americanized versions of Asian horror). It is sufficiently creepy. It also plays with the formula of a theme on childhood games and stories, following the formula of producer Guillermo de Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. This film stays true as a ghost story, though, and a really good one.

“The Orphanage” opens with the silhouettes of children playing a form of children playing a version of tag outside at the orphanage. Laura would knock on the tree facing away from the other children while they would sneak up behind her. They would pose like statues when she turned around. It becomes apparent she is going to be adopted soon, and she is whisked away from the orphanage.

Laura (Belén Rueda) had such happy memories from the orphanage that she decides to move her family there and open a home for children with special needs. Laura is concerned because her son, Simón (Roger Príncep) will not let go of his two imaginary friends. He meets Tomás in a cave on the beach while gathering shells with his mother. Laura assumes Tomás is just another imaginary friend. Simón acquires five more “friends” who reside in the house, and Laura becomes unnerved, especially when they start playing games where they steal “treasure” and hide it, leaving clues for the owner as to its whereabouts.

At the welcome party for the special needs children, Simón disappears. She starts to see a little boy with a mask over his head; thinking it is her son, the police search the cave where she followed him, but no one is found. When the police cannot find a single clue as to Simón’s whereabouts, Laura employs a medium and some parapsychologists to help find her son. They cannot help her find her son, but the medium reveals that something absolutely despicable happened to Laura’s friends at the orphanage shortly after they left. She realizes that in order to find Simón, she has to regress to her childhood and start to play the “imaginary” friends’ games.

I really cannot do the plot justice. This movie was nearly flawless from the opening credits where children’s hands are ripping down wallpaper to the ending where I shuddered. There was maybe one or two tiny plot holes, but they do not affect what really matters in the film.

The cinematography was outstanding. It juxtaposes the temper of the beach with the serene, ghostly atmosphere of the former orphanage. A favourite moment of mine was in the beginning where Laura makes the lighthouse on the beach light up by reflecting the back of a clock against the window for Simón. It was so simple but absolutely stunning.

There is only gory one scene, and it takes you by complete surprise. It is chilling and disgusting, and then it is over. If it was my Tivo, I would have rewound it to see if I actually saw what I thought I did. I gasped, but I could not jump out of my seat because I was so entangled in it from other other scene before it.

The acting was fantastic, and Príncep, who played Simón, is one of the most precious faces I have seen in a movie in a very long time.

It is no surprise that this is Spain’s ballot for Best Foreign film for the Oscars. I have not been this involved with a movie in a long time. It goes beyond “horror film” or “ghost story;” it is dramatic and intelligent.