El Orfanato (The Orphanage) is a Spanish film that is probably one of the greatest ghost stories ever told on film. The story follows 37-year old woman who recently bought the orphanage she grew up in, and left at a young age, in hopes of restoring it into a place to look after disabled children, including her own child Simón. Simón has imaginary friends, something that doesn't concern his parents too much. However after they move into their new home and Simón claims to have new "imaginary" friends which share with him info that would have been impossible to learn on his own, his parents start to worry. Turns out no one told them about the dark history of the orphanage they just bought.
One of the things I really liked about this film is how the story plays out. Each chapter unfolds in a way that you really have no idea what comes next and each time it moves forward it does it in a way that makes sense but you don't expect it.
Another thing I thought worth mentioning is the design of the house. It would have been very easy to pick a house for the orphanage that would have been a lot more stereotypically "haunted" looking but the filmmakers chose a house that while old, pretty much could be any house and in the daytime doesn't look particularly haunted at all, but yet they light it so well at night that the old designs really add a lot under the right mood. It's really, well done.
Truthfully I didn’t care for the ending. I obviously won’t say too much about it, the way it plays out it’s very creepy and probably does fit the rest of the film but it’s so happy it’s odd, then it goes and plays in reverse with the opposite showing things you could already figure out. Which I almost read as: “well we couldn’t make up our mind.”
And the other thing is I feel like the whole film isn’t completely realized, as there’s little through lines especially with secondary characters that don’t seem as well thought out as the rest of the film (primarily with the character Benigna.)
The Amazing part of this film is how scary it is without absolutely any cheap "jump scares." This film gets a lot of it's generally creepy moments just from it's craft, and primarily though the combination of it's elegantly haunting score and it's very creepy camera work. An astute viewer will notice the camera actually acts and moves differently based on what's happening in the story. Eventually if you're paying attention you will know something creepy is coming based on how the camera starts to move. This is amazing. It shows how much thought has gone into each scene before it even begins. This also works because I believe someone who isn't paying attention to the cinematography could probably subconsciously hone in to the change of camera moves causing the viewer to know somethings up long before anything actually appears on screen.
I also have to give a big nod to the main actress Belén Rueda playing Laura. She's not your typical horror actress even by a long shot. She plays a character who's main motivation is to protect her young son, and brings so much to the role that's not on the page, it's amazing. Also the way the character is used I found to be really interesting. She's always trudging forward through things the average viewer wouldn't even go near including going inside hidden lairs in the mansion, creepy shacks behind the house in the middle of the night and even climbing inside furnaces and the like. Crazy. This works for your traditional horror film mechanics where it puts the viewer on the edge of their seat saying: "Don't go in there!" but it also is well setup so that the character has every rational to go forward in these crazy situations. She can't wait till daytime to check it out, time is of the essence. She also doesn't believe anything supernatural is at play in the house until late into the second half of the film. It's a really smart way to use the mechanics that are already in play in the horror genre but also twist them so that they are actually relevant to the story they're telling.
This is a film that I think a lot of people haven't seen, it's got a surprisingly low budget for all that it accomplishes and the story isn't something particularity original but lays it out in a way that feels fresh and original the entire time you're watching. Highly recommend, especially in this age where good horror stories are rarely found. This is Director J. A. Bayona's first feature film and I expect we will be seeing a lot more great work coming from this guy in the future. 4.5/5 stars.
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