Movie Rec: The Orphanage
Saturday, January 5th, 2008 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoI am so glad AMC has $5 shows before noon on weekends--it's meant that D. and I have gotten to see a lot of first run movies, some of which at the cost that they actually warrant. (Ooo, snap! The sarcasm, it stings!) Anyway, we saw "The Orphanage" this morning, which is a wonderfully creepy and atmospheric Spanish horror film and well worth the $5, and perhaps more.
One of the things that bother me about American horror films is that there's a lot more gore and violence than necessary, and very often, the plot comes along and bludgeons (or fillets, or chops; insert your own ironic word choice here) the audience with its forced scares from Frame 1. "The Orphanage" suffers from none of these deficiencies and offers its scares with a leisurely introduction to the story that builds the suspense in a natural, organic way, so that when the story unfolds, all the pieces fall into place with precise, horrific consequences.
The story follows Laura, a woman who has bought the orphanage she was raised in before her adoption with the intention of making it a school for sickly children, her husband, Carlos, and their adopted son, Simon. Simon has several imaginary friends, but as they explore the area around the orphanage, the number grows and Simon claims that the children are playing a game with him, stealing his secret treasure and hiding it in the house, with clues that he can follow to find the treasure again. Laura is dubious about this game and thinks that it is Simon himself making a play for her attention. But then her son disappears and as the police's efforts turn up nothing, she begins to wonder if the stories about her son's imaginary friends were indeed true. To say much else is to ruin the marvelous creepy effect this story has, so I will, in typical second-grade book report fashion, say that if you want to find out what happens next, you should see the film.
There were a number of references, story-wise, in this film to other noteworthy horror movies. There is a sequence with a medium that reminded me of "Poltergeist" (although with none of the dimensional sucking that the "Poltergeist" medium went through), and there are also elements from "The Sixth Sense" (a major plot twist that I did not see coming was at the end of the film), "The Others", and "Pan's Labyrinth". The last one is hardly surprising, considering that Guillermo del Toro produced the movie and his stamp is definitely on the project. None of these references take away from the story itself, which is slow to build, but ultimately quite chilling.
In summary, if all horror movies were this way, I would see a lot more of them. I also appreciate seeing a movie that doesn't rush into its story and instead lets the audience experience the story at the same pace the characters do. Go and see it if you enjoyed "The Sixth Sense" or "The Others."
Because of this movie, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw has elbowed its way up my reading list, after Peter Treymane's Master of Souls, which is the book for the Wednesday meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Book Club. I'm enjoying Master of Souls very much because of its setting, characters, and historical background. I know the two works will be fairly different, of course, in almost every way. The Turn of the Screw seems to be the book that all haunted house movies owe a great to, and I cannot believe I haven't read it before. I enjoyed The Bostonians quite a bit, although it suffered from being a Book For Class. (Reading with a deadline always makes me antsy.) Hopefully, an entry on that should come this week, too, since I have a lot of free time now before the paralegal program starts.
Trailer Park: The preview for Hellboy 2 looks very, very good, with a whole ton of new monsters and a new bad guy who looks like he's walked straight out of a bishounen anime.
One of the things that bother me about American horror films is that there's a lot more gore and violence than necessary, and very often, the plot comes along and bludgeons (or fillets, or chops; insert your own ironic word choice here) the audience with its forced scares from Frame 1. "The Orphanage" suffers from none of these deficiencies and offers its scares with a leisurely introduction to the story that builds the suspense in a natural, organic way, so that when the story unfolds, all the pieces fall into place with precise, horrific consequences.
The story follows Laura, a woman who has bought the orphanage she was raised in before her adoption with the intention of making it a school for sickly children, her husband, Carlos, and their adopted son, Simon. Simon has several imaginary friends, but as they explore the area around the orphanage, the number grows and Simon claims that the children are playing a game with him, stealing his secret treasure and hiding it in the house, with clues that he can follow to find the treasure again. Laura is dubious about this game and thinks that it is Simon himself making a play for her attention. But then her son disappears and as the police's efforts turn up nothing, she begins to wonder if the stories about her son's imaginary friends were indeed true. To say much else is to ruin the marvelous creepy effect this story has, so I will, in typical second-grade book report fashion, say that if you want to find out what happens next, you should see the film.
There were a number of references, story-wise, in this film to other noteworthy horror movies. There is a sequence with a medium that reminded me of "Poltergeist" (although with none of the dimensional sucking that the "Poltergeist" medium went through), and there are also elements from "The Sixth Sense" (a major plot twist that I did not see coming was at the end of the film), "The Others", and "Pan's Labyrinth". The last one is hardly surprising, considering that Guillermo del Toro produced the movie and his stamp is definitely on the project. None of these references take away from the story itself, which is slow to build, but ultimately quite chilling.
In summary, if all horror movies were this way, I would see a lot more of them. I also appreciate seeing a movie that doesn't rush into its story and instead lets the audience experience the story at the same pace the characters do. Go and see it if you enjoyed "The Sixth Sense" or "The Others."
Because of this movie, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw has elbowed its way up my reading list, after Peter Treymane's Master of Souls, which is the book for the Wednesday meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Book Club. I'm enjoying Master of Souls very much because of its setting, characters, and historical background. I know the two works will be fairly different, of course, in almost every way. The Turn of the Screw seems to be the book that all haunted house movies owe a great to, and I cannot believe I haven't read it before. I enjoyed The Bostonians quite a bit, although it suffered from being a Book For Class. (Reading with a deadline always makes me antsy.) Hopefully, an entry on that should come this week, too, since I have a lot of free time now before the paralegal program starts.
Trailer Park: The preview for Hellboy 2 looks very, very good, with a whole ton of new monsters and a new bad guy who looks like he's walked straight out of a bishounen anime.
