Ok, so I finally saw The Orphanage (2007) this past weekend. My best friend had warned me against seeing it; stating simply, "That movie sucks!" Eloquent and well-thought-out as his review was I thought to check it out for myself and it was actually quite good.
I suspect that my friend did not like it because he is a big fan of violence and gore. The film was marketed as a horror movie but it really had neither of those elements. So yes, if that's what you're looking for "The Orphanage" will be a sore dissapointment. It is much more of a mystery/thriller than a horror flick. A lot of people, I'm sure, saw Guillermo Del Toro's name attatched and were expecting the next "Pan's Labyrinth". This is not that either.
While it does have aspects of the supernatural, "The Orphanage" is much more about human nature and psychology.
The film opens with a scene of a bunch of children playing at an orphanage- focusing on Laura who is about to be adopted. Cut to roughly 30 years later (it specifies in the film, I just don’t recall the exact passage of time)- we meet Laura as an adult, back at the orphanage. She and her husband Carlos have bought the property and are moving in with their young son Simón. We soon learn that Simón, like Laura, is adopted. He is also apparently HIV positive. This, coupled with her own past, seems to have inspired Laura to buy the Orphanage where she lived for the early part of her youth so that she could re-open the place as a home for special needs children.
However, it’s not long—as is to be expected with this kind of movie—that strange things start to happen. Simón starts acquiring some new imaginary friends, apparently nothing new for him, but these ones seem particularly sinister. And somehow Simón is learning family secrets- the implication being that these friends are not so imaginary and that they are causing trouble.
The real story begins when Laura and her family hold an open house for the family of the children who are to be coming to live at the home they are opening. Simón and Laura get in an argument and at some point during the party Simón disappears. The remainder of the film is Laura’s search for her son which inevitably and eerily ties into her past at the orphanage and some truly terrible things that went down after she left.
I found it, while not necessarily the most original story, to be genuinely riveting. The acting was great and the plot does hold interest throughout. I was even slightly surprised by the ending in that it bucked the current trend of being a “twist” or “shock” finale. These days the (somewhat) plausible is much more unexpected in this kind of movie than the supposed shock. I hope that doesn’t give too much away. Nor when I say that I see where some would think the end is bittersweet but I actually thought it fit the story nicely and was even somewhat uplifting in a strange way.
Good solid film all around. I definitely would recommend checking it out.