The best horror movies exploit the unfamiliar. I’m not sure how Spanish audiences first received this “The Orphanage,” but the fact that it’s in another language seems to make it more real. Same with older scary movies. Lon Chaney’s makeup in the “Phantom of the Opera” may look comical in some lights, but there’s always that little voice that asks, ‘wait a minute, what if this guy was for real?’
This theme was explored (to slightly comical effect) in “Shadow of the Vampire,” which imagines the makers of 1929’s “Nosferatu” using an actual vampire in the lead role.
But this is the problem with most contemporary horror movies, they rely on loud noises or unnatural amounts of gore to spook the audience.
“The Orphanage” uses some of these tricks, but throw in a few shadows and ask the audience to fill in the gaps and you’ve something that will keep you awake at night that no amount if viscera could. In one scene, a ghost lies in bed next to the main character. She thinks she’s talking with her husband, but we know from one quick scene whom she’s really speaking to.
On the surface, “The Orphanage” is a standard scary-house movie. Protagonist Laura grew up in a seaside orphanage. Year’s later, she and her husband fix it up with the intention that their new home for disadvantaged children will replicate the happy childhood she has. What could happen?
When the couple’s adopted son and see-er of ghosts, Simon, goes missing, Laura begins to realize that her childhood was not as serene as she once thought.
A mysterious old woman appears at the door one day that piques Laura’s suspicion that something else might be wondering around her home. The woman provides the two of the movie’s good scares: one involving an empty shed in the middle of the night and the other involving a shattered jawbone.
It’s standard fare that if you have a kid in a horror movie, they will invariable color a picture of all the ghosts they see, one of which will always have a creepy bag on their head or be old. It also goes without saying that the bag head character will show up in the next scene to terrify the protagonist.
The film later tells us that the kid wearing the bag was horribly disfigured. What is never explained is why the mask is more unsettling than the face? It’s like the caretakers said to themselves, ‘OK, the kid looks scary as it is, but if we really want to give the other orphans nightmares, let’s draw a clown face on the bag. Kids like clowns right?’
When Simon seems to vanish in a cave near the ocean where the first ghost was encountered, Laura spends the next few months consulting police psychologists and ghost hunters to try to find her missing son. When none of these fails to produce Simon, we get the surefire way to solve any horror movie: the heroine must unravel the mystery alone, in the house, at night.
The film was produced by Guillermo del Toro, himself skilled at building tension on a shoestring budget. It’s good marketing to play up his connection to the film to imply to the audience (wife included) that they’re getting a horror/morality tale in the vein of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or “The Devil’s Backbone.”
When we first saw a trailer for this movie, del Toro’s name flashed on screen and my wife remarked, “he’s such a good director.” I told her he was just a producer and that someone else had shot the movie, at which point she uttered a disappointed, “oh.”
Therefore I was surprised that she brought it home one day. She usually has an aversion to all things horror, but I’m sure the del Toro connection was the deciding factor in giving this movie a try.
The movie was effective enough at building suspense. Despite its sub-two-hour running time, my wife insisted we watch this in two parts, half in the evening and the other half in the comforting morning daylight.
I’m sure the filmmaker intended the movie to be seen under limited light. Scenes that would’ve provided a jolt at 10 p.m. lost their punch at 10 a.m.
A scary movie without darkness is like a romantic comedy without a happy ending.
