For years I’d heard a lot about how George Sluizer’s
Spoorloos (The Vanishing) was a classic horror film. Everything I’d heard about it—from its telling of a story through its characters, its sense of forboding, the way it played on your own personal fears—coloured me intrigued. I finally saw it two days ago and enjoyed it, no doubt, but it didn’t strike me as this classic horror film I’d been expecting.
El Orfanato (The Orphanage) delivers in spades.
So take a little of
Don’t Look Now,
The Haunting,
The Others and
Ringu. Mix them up in with other ingredients, like the look of
Pan’s Labyrinth and a freaky mask like in
Nightbreed, and Juan Antonio Bayona has made a Catalan paella that draws on so many sources it should be a rip off but he makes a stone cold classic.
A woman who lived in an orphanage as a girl moves back there as an adult, years after its closing, to live there with her husband and son and open it up again as a home for “special” children (down’s kids by the looks of it).
Her son has two imaginary friends with whom he spends most of his days playing, but upon moving to the house he meets another in a cave. Before long he has six new “imaginary” friends. This is a ghost story—and a stunning ghost story at that—so you can guess who these friends are.
Or can you? Is this house haunted? Is the son just playing games as he’s a lonely boy? Has his mother gone a bit loco? Thankfully this film doesn’t give you any answers on a silver platter. The director trusts you enough to decide for yourself.
There aren’t many plot twists in this film. In fact, I’d say there were none. There is one part, close to the end, when so many answers raised in this film come together but, although it’s not obvious, it is a conclusion you’d probably drawn yourself. The ending is either so sombre it’s heartbreaking or so joyous it’s beautiful. It’s a simple ghost story told brilliantly and it's freaky as fuck.
The poor girl I went with couldn’t watch at one point and was clinging onto my arm for dear life when the mother plays a game of
“one, two, three, knock on the wall” to lure the ghosts out. But, right from the start, this film has dozens of moments that will have you squeezing your partner in anticipation of the horrors that are about to follow. Anytime anyone has to go into a darkened room, down into a cellar or walk through a cave, the director, who’s been playing
Resident Evil too much, shows us the journey they must take. Every time, you’ll think to yourself, “fuck that for a game of soldiers!”
I’ll admit to have having jumped half way out my seat on a couple of occasions, but the film doesn’t need cheap “scares” like that to be frightening and, unlike most films that do use that tactic, the scare doesn’t release the tension afterwards but instead increases it.
A ghost story with the horror of loss and redemption told through scintillating performances, believable and likeable characters, exquisite set design and no shortage of chances to get yer arm round the frightened wee thing you’ve took to the pictures with you. This is a stoating film that anyone with the tiniest interest in horror films should rush out and view immediately. Or at least before the American remake fucks it up.
El Orfanato is on release at selected cinemas now.
