Film: The Orphanage
Release date: 21st July 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 102 mins
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Starring: Belen Rueda, Geraldine Chaplin, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep
Genre: Mystery/Horror/Drama/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico/Spain
The Orphanage is the first feature film from Juan Antonio Bayona. Helped into production by Guillermo Del Toro, whose influence can be felt throughout, the film combines the drama of a missing child mystery with an old fashioned ghost story.
The Orphanage focuses on Laura, who, along with her husband Carlos and their adopted son Simón, moves into the orphanage in which she was raised, intending to re-open it as a residential school for special needs children. However, on the school’s opening day, Simón goes missing, and the rest of the film sees the couple search for their son with increasing desperation, as Simón has HIV from birth and cannot survive for long without his medication.
As any hopes of a logical explanation gradually subside, Laura begins to believe that there could be some supernatural involvement - that the children whom she grew up with before leaving the orphanage as a child are still somehow connected to the house.
Tensions increase between Laura and Carlos, as he wishes that they accept that there is no hope of Simón returning and attempt to rebuild their lives, while Laura refuses to give up on finding her son and continues the search for him in increasingly unlikely ways. In one of the films most memorable scenes, she has a team of parapsychologists visit the house to attempt to find out if Simón is still there in any capacity. When Carlos sees this as an elaborate hoax, he decides that the couple must leave the house in order to get on with their lives, but Laura chooses to stay behind for one more night, and one more chance to communicate with the orphans she left behind as a child…
In his first feature length film, Juan Antonio Bayona has managed the difficult feat of creating a horror film that is not rooted in constantly startling the audience, or in mindless, repetitive violence. Instead, he has created a film which is rich in emotional depth, and in which the horror is not contrived by a series of ‘jumps’ but comes from genuine human fear. The scenes in which Laura and Carlos struggle to come to terms with the loss of Simón impact as much as anything supernatural, and it is a testament to Bayona that he balances drama and horror in a way that few filmmakers (in America at least) have come close to in recent years.
Still, the film delivers potency in the horror department, as Bayona creates several scenes which are downright chilling, such as the aforementioned investigation, and the final scenes of the film, which generate the kind of nerve shredding tension that no amount of cheap shock tactics could possibly achieve. As well as these scenes, on which the film’s horror greatly depends, there is a feel of unease surrounding the house, and Guillermo Del Toro’s influence can be felt in this aspect of the film. The house seems to be a true-life variation on the gothic excess of the world of Pan’s Labyrinth, with winding stair-cases, hidden rooms and dark, eerie spaces. The house provides a perfect setting for the slow, intense build towards the film’s dramatic finale, as every creaking door, and every squeaking movement of the playground apparatus against the winter silence seem to suggest that the house is alive with an indefinable energy.
Praise must also go to the performance of Belén Rueda as Laura. Her portrayal of the mother of a missing child is one filled with desperation and tangible despair, which increases as the film develops, and her search becomes more helpless. As well as this, we see her mental condition gradually deteriorate, and at some points question whether what we are perceiving as supernatural is not simply her mind playing tricks on her as she refuses to accept the death of her son. What makes Rueda’s performance particularly worthy of acclaim is also what makes the film so impressive, the powerful feeling of love that permeates her every action. Bayona has made a horror film rooted in love, one in which the horror is effective and impactful because it feels real. In an age of endless SAW sequels and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes, this is something particularly commendable.
While The Orphanage may lack the cheap thrills of a modern American horror it is hard to see this as a drawback. Juan Antonio Bayona has brought storytelling back to a genre which has become saturated with gruesome violence and nonsensical twist endings.
A beautiful, emotional story, and one in which the deep rooted horror is likely to remain with us in a way which no amount of guts and gore could possibly hope to achieve. PK
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