The Orphanage | Movie Review

The Orphanage “El orfanto” (2007)
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
Spanish

IMDB PLOT: A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.

Although I watched this movie a while ago, by recommendation of @hmarie99, I still have a really vivid memory of it. It has been a while since I’ve seen a horror/thriller that I liked as much. I watch a lot of these movies and usually they don’t come close to the quality that The Orphanage brings to the screen.
Right from the beginning the opening credits start to tell a story, and what a beautiful beach to start with! Every moment of happy images like this is always overshadowed with an uneasy feeling in the back of your mind though. The director, Juan, lets you see things without ever showing you, leaving you to be forced to imagine what you should be afraid of. With an almost fairy tale like story everything becomes clear and fuzzy at the same time.
I quickly thought that the acting was way above par for a horror film. That’s not the first time I’ve noticed that though in Spanish films. For example REC was very well done too. The characters facials expressions are priceless, especially the mothers. During the group sessions you don’t have to speak another language to understand their emotions. That’s not an easy thing for an actor to do in my opinion.
One of my favorite qualities that the creators of El orfanato gave us to watch was the human interaction between male/female & mother/father characters. These roles were very defined. As a non Spanish national it’s hard for me to tell if this Mother, as a super emotional caring person and the father, as a strong stable person, are realities of the culture or not. Is this how these figure are portrayed in “fairy tale” like stories, or is it just how they wanted you to feel about the two characters while watching?
I would definitely watch this movie again and I think I’m finally over the movie causing me to be creeped out every time my house makes those creaking sounds.