The Orphanage

This is a beautiful horror movie.

That doesn’t sound right. But in the right way, a horror movie can be considered aesthetic to some audiences. It simply depends on the artistic taste.

“The Orphanage” from 2007 looks like a grisly film that seems to have been left in the vault for many years. It looks like a movie that has been collecting dust on the shelf. But it gives the film a more atmospheric feeling. The grayness of it is, the colors peeling away like dusty motes.

But let me tell you hard difficult it was in getting a decent copy of “The Orphanage” in my town of Oshkosh. Yeah, the drinking town. It’s like trying to find a copy of a newspaper that hasn’t been so badly dog-eared. First I got to Family Video to get a copy, after waiting two days for it, finding that some schmuck already put a huge line in the disc. Therefore I couldn’t play on my machine.

Then I called the Hollywood Video store on Koeller Street in hopes of getting this film Despite many copies there, I asked for them to put a copy on hold. It’s Halloween season. What did you expect? When I do go there, wading my way to the counter, I discover that no one has placed copy at the desk. There was a girl and a guy. The girl was helpful enough. When I confessed to calling there not more than an hour ago, the guy said, “No one called me about it.” I know it was the same guy I talked to on the phone. I recognized his voice. And no one else was working there.

Then I'm told by the guy that it's a subtitled movie. Okay. I can deal with that. It's the least of my concerns.

But I did grab the movie.

This film “The Orphanage” is a haunting journey that takes you to the bottom of the abyss of many emotional impacts. It is a definite portrayal of a woman who is a lost soul trying to rediscover her purpose in life, looking for some direction. It’s a way of life for Laura who becomes a foster parent for her son who has HIV.

But she loses everything. Her son. Her work. The purpose in her life. All she wants to be is with her long-lost son who has gone missing for so long. Every step she takes in the film, like finding more broken shards of the living, brings her closer to finding her son. Not everything is all what it seems.

The orphanage in which she returns to live in is filled ghost. Spirits of the children reside inside the walls of the house. They come to you only when you are close to death… like finding a bridge to the other side. The steps you take finds a doorway into the spirit world. In some ways, death finds you.

There are some definite horrific scenes in this movie. While it remains a drama film, boasting some very emotional scenes of the mother and son, there are some gruesome stuff. The car accident involving a former orphanage worker Benigna has some surprising results. It’s very creepy. And there is the sense of mood that paints this film. You could not get away from the impending gloom that suffers the house.

Everything is like an illness there. The children who were there all had their own health concerns. Many of them pass away early. Even the house itself feels forlorn, trapped with its own sickness. The film knows how to make a very good mood piece. It’s too bad the United States has strayed so far into making gory horror films and forgetting to make a film that centers on ghostly suggestion. Hollywood has a lot to learn from counties like Spain and Japan.

Well-know Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro of Hellboy fame and another horror classic "Pan’s Labyrinth" helped produce this movie. He did lend some extra money to give it a bigger budget and more shooting time to complete the film. Del Toro really believed in this movie. It’s easy to see. The film offers senses outside of the norm. It is a lovely peer into a ghost story… describing a mother’s desire to be close to her son again.

One of the best scenes of the film is where the mother Laura is knocking on wood, counting to three, and the ghosts of the children come out to play. There’s one scene where you can look over her shoulder to find several ghosts shambling closer, like shadows. It’s one of the creepiest shots in the film. But very provocative. As it elicits a memory of old of children playing.

The setting is perfect. The old colonial house boasts much suggestion through its eerie windows and it feels like it is being dragged to the ground. Being so old, the house seems to linger. It feels like the place is decaying as you can see the rough edges around the building, the antiquity playing inside the hallways.

You can see many more settings perfect for horror films… the woods, a cave, the damning cliffs that overlook the crashing waters that wash over the rocks. Then there is the stalking monument of the lighthouse casting its light over the darkness like a towering angel.

But what is important is the relationship of the mother to her son. You can feel the pain and happiness that is strongest in their friendship. You can feel the boy’s anguish when he faces his own mortality. You can see the mother’s tears when she misses her son very much. Those are what makes the moving moments in the film.

If you’re feeling like you’re a little offset from the horror of the film, which is quite unnerving at times, you can wash away the feeling by watching a few Scooby Doo shows, most particularly the old 1969 season. They will be like little Halloween treats you can enjoy during this holiday.