The Orphanage (2007) - A

I went to see "The Orphanage" because the Rotten Tomatoes summary for the movie intrigued me: "When it seems like every horror movie nowadays is a remake or a grisly exercise in sadism, The Orphanage is a breath of fresh air for critics and audiences alike, seamlessly blending in a poignant tale of loss with the scares..." Actually, the Rotten Tomatoes summary ends with "and blood," but after seeing the movie I felt that the quote was far more accurate without the reference to blood. While there is one brief, grisly scene (you see the mangled body of a woman horribly killed in a car accident), the movie has almost no violence or gore in it. Instead, this poignant ghost story scares you by creating characters you sympathize and identify with, and then putting them into situations where you feel terrified, because if you were in that situation, you would be absolutely terrified. The setting (a creepy former orphanage)effectively heightens the tension, and the movie does a great job of keeping itself scary because it mostly leaves the terror in your own imagination. The most recent movie that I can think of that tries a similar tack is "The Others," but "The Orphanage does a much better job than "The Others" did.

"The Orphanage," a Spanish movie with subtitles, tells the story of Laura. She has just bought the orphanage she was raised in until she was adopted, and intends to turn it into a care facility for special needs kids. Her son Simon starts talking to six new imaginary friends, and insisting that they want to play games with him. On the day the special needs children first arrive at the house, Simon disappears, and as the search for Simon falters, Laura becomes more and more convinced that Simon's new "imaginary" friends were actually ghosts who have kidnapped him.

"The Orphanage" features a wonderfully ambiguous script. You're never quite sure whether the ghosts are all in Laura's mind or really there. Even after all is revealed, you still wonder exactly how much of what you saw was real and how much was in Laura's mind. The big reveal is amazingly satisfying, tying the movie together beautifully. I was reminded of how I felt during "The Sixth Sense" when the big secret was finally revealed. I suddenly felt that everything made so much more sense in the movie, and gave me such a feeling of completion.

There are a few rough spots in the movie, though. The movie is quite slowly paced. While this works well to build the tension once Simon has disappeared, the movie definitely dragged during the introduction. There's also a brief coda that really flirted with disaster for me. I thought the movie was over, then the coda started and I was immensely frustrated for a little bit because I felt like the coda was making certain things clear that didn't need clarification, almost like the film makers didn't trust the viewer to "get it." Fortunately, there is a beautiful, ambiguous moment that ends the movie. Although I still think the movie would have been stronger if it had just ended when I thought it did, that last moment at least made me feel the final scene wasn't a complete waste.

I went back and forth a bit on the final grade for the movie, since I felt it was right on the edge of whether it was strong enough to recommend to everyone, or just to people who liked that kind of movie. In the end, I decided that the great approach "The Orphanage" takes towards being scary was enough to just squeak it into the A category.

Final Grade: A