Viraj's Weblog

This movie was hyped as being produced by Guillermo Del Toro, who directed the pretty awesome Pan's Labyrinth. It's strange how a director's fame is used to sell another movie that's not even directed by him. Anyway, it got me interested as well as the good reviews, so I went and saw it.

The theater had a lot of kids in it likely expecting some shock/horror. In fact I saw a few leave after the movie didn't turn out to be what they expected. One thing about artsy theaters is the moviegoers have more respect for the film and stay quiet. At the big AMC's, the benefit of stadium seating is devalued by being packed with noisy kids. I sometimes feel like donating some money to the small theaters so they can improve their seating.

Anyway, 'The Orphanage' is a rather slow moving ghost story. It's a bit similar to 'The Others', but I thought that film was better. This film definitely has a lot of atmosphere and has that going for it, but the slow storyline almost seems abrupt as it's punctuated with some shock moments. Even the non-shock moments, where things get lively and adventurous, almost seem pushed onto the audience and don't transition well. However, it does give a dream-like quality to it, where things are disjoint and emotions change frequently. That was likely the purpose, but I just knew very early it was too dream-like and could expect that things are not as they appear.

It's generally about ghosts and children. There are actually very few shock moments, some of them formulaic, but others actually pretty tense. I was rather bored until the end where the mother finds clues to the disappearance of her child and slowly reaches the explanation. The audience is played beautifully and the tension is palpable. It was more suspense than shock, and definitely had a Hitchcockean feel to it.

I'm not sure if I can recommend the movie. If you like ghost stories and psychological suspense, you will like it. But if you are not a big fan of 'things are not as they seem', you will hate it. The movie did have nice cinematography that really contributed to the feel of the movie.