Ghost
story with teeth
Must
say I was looking forward to The Orphanage after being blown away
by Guillermo del Toro’s marvelous Pan’s Labyrinth;
which cleverly meshed a child’s fairytale with a brutal
adult nightmare. It still remains an outstanding piece of cinema
for me in the last couple of years. That aside, let’s look
at this latest offering from the del Toro stable. Here he acts
as producer, with the film helmed by newcomer Juan Antonio Bayona
but there’s little doubt of del Toro’s influence.
It’s a chilling classic gothic ghost tale jetted into the
modern day with some killer shocks that would do justice to Stephen
King.
Laura (Belen Rueda) is married to wealthy doctor
Carlos (Fernando Cayo) living with nine year-old adopted son Simon
(Roger Princep), in a rambling baroque mansion that was once an
orphanage on cliffs above the sea. Laura herself lived in the
orphanage as a child before adoption. They’ve bought now
it to be foster parents to a small number of mentally challenged
children. The day the new orphans arrive at this dismal ‘Wuthering
Heights’, young Simon vanishes, having first been haunted
by unseen children he thinks are playmates. We learn the sensitive
child has AIDS and is prone to fantasy.
Shattered by Simon’s disappearance, Laura
becomes affected by the spirit world in the gloomy halls and creepy
rooms of the aging orphanage. After the failure of a long police
search, Laura gets involved in a hi-tech séance with gaunt
medium Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin) and is finally drawn into a
disturbing game of hide-and-seek with dead children who leave
a trail of clues to Simon’s whereabouts. Pray she never
finds him.
To reveal any more would be to spoil the show. One
senses del Toro throughout – again we have a haunted child
in an orphanage much like his earlier The Devil’s Backbone,
references to classic fairy stories (in this case Peter Pan),
and the slightly menacing child’s game that opens the film
is later repeated more frighteningly to increase the suspense.
The film also strongly echoes Robert Wise’s The Haunting,
and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, while something
of another noted Spanish director, Luis Buñuel, lurks in
the dark undertones. There’s even a flash of the original
Phantom of the Opera, as the picture is populated with some grotesque
characters. Examples include the sinister old women with bottle
thick lenses and the rotund parapsychologist.
The
leading performance by Belen Rueda (Savage Grace) is exemplary,
capturing the nervous anxiety of her search reflected in every
line of her face. Young Roger Princep is an appealing Simon, with
the right degree of wide-eyed charm. Geraldine Chaplin (The Hidden)
does a neat turn as the hapless medium; while Fernando Cayo (The
Contestant) portrays the kind of man who can’t be bothered
to get out of bed to chase spooks and leaves it all to his long
suffering wife.
Tight direction by Bayona makes much of the locations
like the crumbling mansion with dimly lit rooms and corridors,
and the sepulchral cave by the lighthouse. He has a true feel
for the gothic nature of his story. The camerawork complements
the subject matter, adding to the unsettling atmosphere as it
tracks through dark caverns or eerie junk-filled rooms. As in
The Haunting, inanimate objects focus the evil. The editing is
exceptional, providing some nasty shocks – I doubt I’ve
seen such clever use of a black screen before.
Perhaps the pace loses a little oomph in the mid-section,
but certainly doesn’t weaken the overall impact and fans
of the supernatural won’t be in the least disappointed.
It’s up there with the best of the genre. At the preview,
there were those nervous giggles you hear when teenagers get jittery.
While it may not do much for the slash-and-burn enthusiasts, it
will certainly satisfy those more into psychological horror.
John Bale
