Review of The Orphanage (2007) by Gareth J — 20 Jul 2012

More like a paranormal drama than a horror film, this Guillermo Del Toro produced debut film by director Juan Antonia Bayona is better suited to fans of M. Night Shyamalan than to the work of Del Toro.

The film's strength is it's ability to document the myriad tribulations and turmoils associated with the loss/abduction of child, particular with regard to protagonist Laura (Belen Rueda) who goes from grief to blind desperation and finally madness as her relationship with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) continues to gradually erode. If nothing else we sympathize with Laura's plight (even if we don't care about her) and we share the emptiness she feels without her son all too well.

The biggest criticism about the film is that it fails to truly realize its frightening potential. Through out the experience you want to be afraid but are never granted the fulfillment you crave. The general lack of gore and the sparsity of visual atrocity during the genre scenes would be forgivable if they did feel so cliched. The problem with films about supernatural phenomena is that if you see one of them then you've seen them all and there is a definite whiff of over-familiarity here. A shame, since aesthetically the film had all the potential to be a classic tale of terror. Perhaps this is the genre connoisseur in me being overly judgmental, and it happens a lot, but it is disappointing when one buys a DVD expecting the Shining and instead getting The Haunting.

So is The Orphanage really worth the effort? Perhaps. To summarize, this is not really a film for hardcore horror fans and should not be viewed as such. Rather it is merely an addition to the small cache of films which strive to be more than blood and gore.