I wanted to give some quick props for The Orphanage as it goes into limited release this weekend, before going wider on January 11th. The screening I attended last night left me squinting my eyes, clutching my coat, and jumping in my seat with fear. The basic plot involves a woman who believes her missing adopted son has been abducted by ghosts in the old crumbling Bava-esque orphanage that only people in horror movies ever willingly choose to live in. Although reminiscent of other recent and classic ghost films, it's an incredibly impressive debut film by all involved. I was reminded of elements from The Others, The Devil's Backbone, Stir Of Echoes, and some of the ghost hunting bits from Poltergeist and The Haunting (the good one). Basically, if you liked those films, you probably will have a great time with this one. It's much more of a restrained "boo" kind of ghost story than a gorefest, despite the R rating, but DDT FX pulls off one amazing injury make-up effect that freaked out the whole audience.

Oh, and the filmmakers made very effective use of Geraldine Chaplin's cameo as a psychic. Green nightvision photography really brings out the spooky in her face.

Muchas gracias for the gothic horror haunted house cinema, amigos. We don't get enough of these.

Here's a Daily News interview with the director.

I'm looking forward to this one... and it'll probably be the last one before the nightvision goggles starts becoming yet another tired horror film trope.

I'm looking forward to this one too. The image of the child with the bag over its head is incredibly creepy. I'm also actually excited to see it on our shores so soon (it opened in Spain in October). Usually we have to wait a year or so for a foreign horror title to hit here.

Big article on this one in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/movies/3...r=1&oref=slogin

Which distributor has picked it up for the US release? I'm seeing a pop-up ad at imdb.com with "Guillermo del Toro presents" and "in selected theaters December 28" so is a DVD release forthcoming?

Picturehouse has it for release in the US. It is opening wide on Jan. 11th.

Dear MPAA,

Please read the linked NY Times article and ask yourself, was that R-rating really deserved? Or are you just clearing the path for One Missed Call's second weekend?

:angry:

I just caught a TV spot for the film so its showing somewhere local.

Anyone catch this over the weekend, as it went into wider release?

Full disclosure: I'm adapting from prior posts at DVD Maniacs, because I'm tired, and naturally given to slothfulness besides.


I found THE ORPHANAGE to be fairly familiar and a tad dull, though very carefully made. It's certainly earnest. It's definitely better than THE OTHERS but fell short of say, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE - if we were to keep the comparisons recent and Latin in nature.

Still, I found certain plot points and setpieces awfully familiar (there's a crucial element specifically redolent of the benighted remake of THE HAUNTING, though much better integrated here) and none of the 'jump' moments much beyond acceptable. It is very well cast, especially Belén Rueda, who does all the heavy lifting and is rather well-upholstered herself!

Short version - THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE with a bit too much syrup poured on.

Less short - I enjoyed it, but with some reservations. I always like a solid "ghost story" movie and this one had some effective stuff, but it was the slightest bit treacly and paced oddly (the highlight was, arguably, the "falling into the bathroom" scene (vagueness so as to avoid spoilers) and that was, what 1/3 of the way in? Still, good tense atmosphere. Thankless, thankless role for the poor actor playing the underdeveloped husband.

I'll admit to liking THE OTHERS more.

And, while it's still effective here, I'm calling moratorium on:


**SPOILERS** (wouldn't want that awful MIST situation to reoccur)





























"sudden death by unheard, unexpected car" jump scares. This is the close cousin to the "sudden, unexpected car accident scene" I moratorium-ed back during the release of THE DESCENT and is now becoming as pervasive. Yes, it works. But do you want to turn it into the next "cat jumping at the person for no reason"?

Hey - not everybody can be Charles Atlas!

I think it's too late... especially the "unexpected T-bone" that's been popping up more frequently. I've seen it used in a couple of recent theatrical releases and both times I could sense it coming a good five/ten seconds before impact.

WARNING . . . MAJOR SPOILERS

Two problems with the plot:

1. Once it’s revealed that Benigna was not a social worker, I had trouble believing that this simple orphanage attendant would have the means to get a folder full of accurate information on Simón. Did she tap Laura’s telephone or bribe someone at the adoption agency?

2. Towards the end, Laura discovers the remains of the other children deposited in sacks and hidden in a storage vault. We get the idea that Benigna murdered them in revenge for the drowning of her son Tomás. Whether she killed them one by one or en masse, wouldn’t a dozen kids gone missing lead to a massive police investigation and wall-to-wall media coverage? I don’t see how Laura, her husband, and the police looking for Simón could not have been aware from the beginning that they were dealing with the infamous Orphanage of the Missing Children.

SOME SPOILERS




I caught this today and I really really reeeaallly didn't like it. And you can tell I'm serious because I threw a couple of extra e's and a's and l's in that third "really".

I think it has all the flaws of PAN'S LABRYINTH, which I also didn't like, for pretty much the same reasons, although the flaws here are exaggerated. One could, if one were so inclined, go on and on about this. There's the farrago of cliches (which was not a problem with PAN'S, I hasten to add, except for that movie's portrayal of the Heroic Socialist Resistance. Here, though, there's more than just some friendly nods to it's predecessors, the borrowing of POLTERGEIST in particular is pretty much direct, with Geraldine Chapman playing the little spooky one. Though hey, who knew Ms. Chapman could speak fluent Spanish? Way to go there!) resulting in almost a game of "pick the trope" ("oh, wait, it's The Child With Spooky Imaginary Friends! Oh, wait, it's the Haunting As a Belabored Metaphor for Unexpiated Sin!"). Like PAN, there's plot contrivances big enough to signal jets flying above. Like PAN, there's syrupy sentimentality so sticky sweet it give Hallmark Hall of Fame specials a run for their money. Like PAN, it refuses to face up to the true implications of what it's telling, too -- let me ask anyone who's seen it -- what do you think of that ending?

But at least PAN was always presented as a kind of fractured fairy tale -- like or hate it. And some of these things work, at least sort of, in that structure. Arguably. THE ORPHANAGE is presented as a scary horror movie and these sorts of things don't work at all here -- actually sort of work against it. In fact, honestly, I think I was somewhat sold a bill of goods. If I'd been told I was going to see a PAN'S LABRYNITH with ghosts, I'd have gone and seen that sking down mountains flick. Or JUNO.

One last thing. One of these days I'll bore you all with my rant on kids in movies, but for now, unless you're really really good at it, don't put a kid in your movies. Most kids in movies come across as either annoyingly sweet or annoying bratty, and this kid sure did. Frankly I was glad to see him disappear, I thought at least we'd have some peace. And I like kids! Ask anyone who knows me personally -- well, you can't but trust me on this. If I feel this way, and I'm predisposed to liking kids, well.

Particularly because if I understand the climax properly -- and it's ambiguous, but I think this is the most common sense interpretation -- an important scene early in the picture, the "bathroom scene" for those who've seen it -- had to be done by the kid! (I don't think other explanations make as much sense.) If I'm right, the kid really deserved a smack and bed without dinner. How am I supposed to work up interest in FINDING the little brat?

doug

PS. Full of inappropriate gore, too, and I can't believe I've actually written that phrase. A first time for everything, I guess. Most of it was superfluous, and much of it felt more than a little tacky -- like the filmmaker was more embarassed to show it than we were to watch it, but somehow felt like he should or something.

Hey I liked the movie. I had a good time. Am I the only one here that noticed the homage to FRIDAY THE 13TH and FRIDAY THE 13th PART II? That was worked best. I still think that sack kid may have had more of a hand in this. Yes the storyline was derivative at times (Richard Matheson, Spielberg, Bava, Argento etc.). Yet, horror movie fans should expect this by now. Some influences are nearly inescapable. That is the modus operands for current cinema. Few of us complain when the Italian cinema steals from Hitchcock or George Romero. With THE ORPHANAGE it also didn’t bother me. With this movie if felt more like a tradition than being a pastiche. I understand that some people set a higher or a different standard for scare sequences. But should movies be held to that kind of scrutiny all of the time? The story was bittersweet and I really cared for the characters. It was full of details and hidden stories. Special mention should go the opening title sequence. That was most effective.


There are spoilers beyond this point…















“Once it’s revealed that Benigna was not a social worker, I had trouble believing that this simple orphanage attendant would have the means to get a folder full of accurate information on Simón. Did she tap Laura’s telephone or bribe someone at the adoption agency?”

I’m still confused about this as well. I figured she visited the place from time to time and may have been a clairvoyant herself to some degree.


"Towards the end, Laura discovers the remains of the other children deposited in sacks and hidden in a storage vault. We get the idea that Benigna murdered them in revenge for the drowning of her son Tomás. Whether she killed them one by one or en masse, wouldn’t a dozen kids gone missing lead to a massive police investigation and wall-to-wall media coverage? I don’t see how Laura, her husband, and the police looking for Simón could not have been aware from the beginning that they were dealing with the infamous."

I figured it was covered up. "no one needs to know". "don't ask. don't tell."



Another aspect that worked was how the search for her child was a metaphor for human ability to distract themselves from there surroundings. I can’t find an eloquent way of writing it but the progress of the movie reminded me off Geoff Dyer’s “Out of Sheer Rage”. In his quest to write a biography on D.H. Lawrence, Dyer is more drawn into Lawrence’s Italian home, journals, traveling, and writing his own novel. He likes finds he’d rather do anything than write a bio on Lawrence because Lawrence is staring to bore him. He doesn’t want to face the outcome that he could be wasting his time. So he avoids it by wasting his time. How does that factor into THE ORPHANAGE? It probably does not but you’ll have to see for yourself.

VERY MILD SPOILERS

Doug, if you didn't like the film you're certainly entitled to your opinion... but I think you're totally off-base here. Full of inappropriate gore? Where?!? Where is all this gore you speak of? There's one nasty fingernail injury. And there's an accident scene that realistically would have splashed blood all over the place, but is depicted with a very "dry" and bloodless prosthetic effect. That's it.

Well, agreed, "full of gore" is over the top. How about "moments of ridiculously awkward grotesque effects"?

BIG SPOILERS




Exactly why did we even see that fingernail injury? What was the point? Yeah, her fingers get slammed in the door, I get it, that hurts. But note we rest beat after beat on that thing -- and doesn't she actually pop off the nail? Why do we see that? It has no ramifications in the plot -- she gets hurt far worse a bit later and we don't see that. It's not a Fulci-like promise to the audience that things are gonna get messy. It's just...there.

That accident sequence. Exactly why are we shown the old woman's face? Which I think has her jaw knocked off, right? What's the point of that? Why are we lingering over her corpse? It's a ridculous scene all around, but that moment in particular felt lumpen. Is the special effects guy a friend of there's? Do they think they need this stuff to make a "horror movie".

And I couldn't believe at the climax, once we know that the kid is dead, that they showed the wizened face of his corpse. For awhile. It felt incredibly tacky to me. Why are we be shown this? It's not horrifying. We don't need it for information in the scene. It's just sort of awkwardly there, like your sister's ex-husband at a family get-together.

In all honesty, if this had been a Hollywood picture, I would have said those moments were in there just to get the R rating.

doug

It could be an homage to Cronenberg's THE FLY. Certainly wouldn't be the first time that Cronenberg has been evoked in a film with Guillermo del Toro's name on it.

Could be an homage to Cronenberg's HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.

I caught this Sunday morning and while I didn't dislike the film, I also found it to be familar. In some aspects I was reminded of "The Devil's Backbone" while in another aspect it reminded me of "Los Sin Nombre" (The Nameless). Speaking of "Los Sin Nombre" I think I'll revisit that one real soon. The ending is a stunner.

I really wanted to like this film, but found it tedious (on account of its seriously flawed screenplay and meandering and telegraphed direction). It's beautifully shot. It's well acted. But it's tedious. Rolled my eyes at the big Spielbergian "reunion." I can't honestly say that it was awful, but it is big miss IMHO.

THE ORPHANAGE did incredible at the Spanish Goya awards, basically their equivalent of the Oscars. It won:

Best New Director
Best Original Screenplay
Best Art Direction
Best Visual EffectsBest Makeup and Hair Design
Best Soundand
Best Line Production

Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's REC also scored two awards for Breakout Performance and Best Editing.

http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5852

Just thought I'd drag this thread back to life again as I saw The Orphanage last night (it just opened in the UK) and I loved it. Definitely one of the best of the year so far for me.

The criticisms that it offers nothing new are entirely valid but at least it borrows from the right places and does a good job of it. Beautifully shot, well acted and heavy on the atmosphere - and the slow-burning build up very definitely had a worthy pay-off in my book. I thought I saw where it was going and while I had it pegged partially correctly, I was certainly far from seeing the whole picture - in this respect I was very satisfied come the ending.

I know that one of the films it's been compared to is The Innocents, which seems fair. Granted, it does deliver quite a few of the now mandatory "quiet... quiet... LOUD NOISE!" frights, but equally managed to confound my expectations during a couple of moments when it seemed like they were setting up such a moment only for nothing to happen. And (in my opinion) the best scare, which happens early on, is far more similar to the old school antics of The Innocents in as much as there is virtually no noise at all - just a sudden unexpected appearance by someone in complete silence (a la the window scene in the aforementioned classic). In fact this particular moment resulted in one poor girl in the cinema coming out with the single most impressive scream I've ever heard at a horror film - not just a little whelp, it was a full-on auditorium filler. Oh, how we laughed.

Not for everyone this chiller then, judging by some of the posts so far, but it certainly impressed me. Money well spent.

It just opened here too and I was pretty happy with it too.


SPOILERS (for this and PAN'S LABYRINTH)
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The ending was perfect - appropriate and heartbreaking - what my old screenwriting mentor would call a soul's "purging of pity and contempt".

Forgive me if I haven't thought this through but PAN's entire narrrative appears to take place entirely in the girl's mind making none of the supernatural phenomena real, whereas this film embraces the notion of phantoms. They guide the characters, interact and move objects. When Simon disappears, it is because he's playing in Tomas' hidden room. His treasure hunts and discoveries are guided by real phantoms. His imaginary friends are spectres of the children. The supernatural phenomena that unsettles everyone obfuscates the very real hammering of Simon when he's accidentally trapped in the basement.

Victor

I saw the film last night. I generally enjoyed it - and found one or two bits genuinely unnerving (especially Geraldine Chaplin's scene as she wanders round the house). The recylcling of scenes from other movies didn't bother me, but I did find the pacing a little uneven ...

SPOILERS! >>>


... I thought the character of Tomas was under used. The one scene when he terrorised the main character was especially effective, and I'm surprised they didn't bring him back for more frights. I also thought that it was somewhat unlikely that five orphans could be bumped off and no one notice - was Spain's social services that lax in the 60s?! Finally, whilst the sentimental ending fit perfectly it did seem like a rather comfy finale considering the sinister nature of the proceeding 90 minutes.

SPOILER BELOW...




Maybe, but I got the impression the children were from the mid seventies. Assuming the film takes place today (like 2007-08), there is a reference to Laura's character being 37 years old. I'm 40 and I was born in 1967... if Laura was one of the young children in the beginning, the "ghost" children would've been killed in the mid-1970s.

SPOLIERS>>>

Sorry, Don. My bad math - and I'm roughly the same age as that character, so I should no better! But the point remains. Could five orphans be bumped off and their bodies hidden without anyone noticing?

It is the hard knock life.

:lol:

Okay, I'll stick my cultural and historical ignorance into the conversation. During whatever decade is depicted in the prologue, would orphans in Spain be wearing outfits like that?

I finally caught up with this one on DVD and you can count me among the people who enjoyed it. There are two or three realllllly creepy scenes in this one.


SPOILERS


The person slipping into bed bit is going to haunt me for a while. Actually, I don't think I would mind that too much these days - ghost or not. :)

The image of that poor kid in the mask is so scary, like a demonic Raggedy Ann. The one thing that couldn't escape me though is how this is basically a very low-key remake of POLTERGEIST. Seriously, all of the elements are there (kid disappears into house, psychic investigators, dead people seeking vengeance for being wronged, a mother who travels to the other side to save her child). I still liked the film though, especially that it maintained an ending that was both downbeat and optimistic. And how lucky is the dad? He gets to start dating again hassle free!


END SPOILERS


I do think the film could have been trimmed by a good 15 minutes and it would have been better. I loved the build up but it seemed a few bits were taking too long.

I liked this too but will say it also felt a bit turgid at times.

About Geraldine Chaplin's Spanish: she's been making movies in Spain for over 30 years, so she's had plenty of time to brush up on her Espanol.

Re: the road accident. I felt the rather horrific injury was an echo of Tomas' mask/bag... both of which opened at the bottom. A coincidence or a blackly comic sight gag? Either way, it worked for me.

...with a big dollop of the remake of THE HAUNTING at a crucial point.

I loved it, mainly due to the heroic and very moving perfomance by the female lead. I counted THE INNOCENTS, THE HAUNTING, POLTERGEIST, FRIDAY THE 13th, THE SIXTH SENSE, THE VANISHING, and THE FORGOTTEN among its influences, as well as that swell flop into the shower Sarah Polley did in the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD.

I thoroughly enjoyed the clever use of that eternal waif, Geraldine Chaplin, wise old woman and scared little girl all at once.

SPOILERS?

I wondered about the missing children, too, unless Begnina told the orphanage she had adopted them out. I wondered why she didn't toss the ashes into the sea, since it was so near by. The thought of her still walking around years later, pushing a carriage with the masked doll in it is incredibly sad.

So, Begnina came, with her son, to work there after Laura was adopted, right? And, in the film, Laura only begins to take the mask off the ghost of Tomas, while in the trailer she bares his face, I think.