As Spain’s
nominee
for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, you will hear plenty
about
The Orphanage, especially from people who like shocks and scares that
spook you
and make you wonder what is going bump in the middle of the night.
Belen Rueda stars as Laura
–
a woman who has returned to the small, isolated home where she was
raised when
it was an orphanage. She
wants to
restore the home to its past glory and help raise young children with
special
needs, but the plan starts to unravel when her own son, Simon (Roger
Princep),
starts to claim he has made friends with little invisible beings all
around the
house. Before you
can say that kid is so
cute as he plays with his little imaginary friends (or, that kid is CRAZY!), young
Simon disappears
leaving Laura and her husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), to wonder if he
will
ever be found.
Where is Simon?
Director Juan Antonio Bayona
and writer Sergio Sanchez have created a spooky, slightly melodramatic
movie
that is part Hitchcock, part Poltergeist and all creepy. The Orphanage is for
people who want to
immerse themselves in a movie willing to explore the other realm and
scare them
with each twist and turn as the mystery slowly unveils itself making
you
question every character’s sanity, the possibilities of
ghostly powers at work,
or imaginations run amok. Let
your
imagination run wild, and you might have some fun.
Bayona shows great skill using
creaking floors, banging on the walls and mysterious voices to build
the
tension and make everyone in the theater believe this old house is a
place of
horrible evil (as you jump out of your seat and apologize to your
neighbor for
spilling Cherry Coke and popcorn all over his date’s dress),
but it is Rueda who
helps put a human, compassionate face on it all.
While the audience has the
most fun and frights as characters reach out to the other side, Belen
keeps us
grounded by reminding us with her heart wrenching performance that a
mother’s
despair and longing for her missing child is the true, central story in The Orphanage. Her pain
reaches out to
anyone with a child, or anyone with simple compassion in your heart for a
woman who
has lost all that matters in her life.
Of
course, Sanchez and Bayona take advantage of those emotions with a
fantastic, shocking
resolution, even if the ending goes on a bit too long and attempts one
too many
twists.
3
½
Waffles (Out of 4)
The
Orphanage is
rated R for some disturbing content.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com
