The Orphanage

Reviews are pretty mixed. I had a screening pass for last night but was too tired to go.

have you seen Bayona's short films?

Not so far as I know.

this opens today in Austin TX, going to see it later :D

pretty good!

I have to say the title is really, really unscary.

The Bakery

The Discount Shoe Warehouse

The Unlicensed Physician's Office (That Used to Be Part of an HMO)

orphans scare the shit out of me. im like, what must they have done?

this movie is kinda fucked up

SAY MORE

orphanage always scary to me bc when parents are mad at kids and want them to behave they threaten to send them to the orphanage.

Good review:

I really don't get the whole concept of ghosts. I mean, why are ghosts supposedly so mad all the time? Isn't a ghost just somebody's grandpa? My grandpa was a Norwegian carpenter named Ole who smoked a pipe and ate licorice all day. Why would he go haunt somebody? Isn't there enough licorice in heaven? I don't know a single person who's been killed—or even inconvenienced—by a ghost, and that's why being afraid of a ghost is a waste of time. You know what I'm afraid of? A HUNGRY LION!

this was fantastic.

it was creepy, i liked it

from the outset, i have been like "wtf, this is just Guillermo del Toro ripping off his own movie?"

amirite, or is it vastly different?

This was great, especially the scene where she forces herself to dress up and play that game with the ghost children.

Also A+ for catching me completely off guard with the scene where she finds the whistle.

The whistle around Benigna's neck? That whistle? Horrifying!

Yeah that was some Carrie shit

still no one has answered my question?

Yes yes they are similar. But I haven't seen DB so I couldn't tell you what they did differently.

it's not del toro. he produced it but didn't direct it. so, no.

I call bullshit. Bayona can't create a creepy atmosphere of his own, so he takes some stylistic notes from Del Toro and adds some conventional loud noises. Not scary. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Then again, everyone around me loved this.

nice creepy little movie with a really fucking awful ending

are all spanish horror movies about the ghosts of fascism or just the ones ive seen

oh, yeah, that goddamn ending...if he wanted to go with that idea, he should have (spoiler, i guess) ended with the mom sitting with all the kids...the husband part was just overkill

Even though it wasn't that long, this just felt like a really long, bad M. Night Shyamalan film.

What was the point of the medium's visit other than lol infra-red cameras?

i thought this was unmitigated shite until the last 30 minutes or so which were good. it wasn't scary it just gave you a bad fright with the use of jump shot + very very loud noise.

the production designer needed shot.

LOLed majorly when she is looking for her son after he goes missing and pulls off the masks of 1. some old guy 2. fat kid with down syndrome and 3. small girl with bright ginger hair to see if they are him.

also can someone explain the thinking behind the shot early on where she uses the back of a small alarm clock to reflect the light of the moon onto a lighthouse 1 mile away?

Light internally reflects off glass was the idea, presumably.

probably but that wouldn't help you see anything outside.

actually the opposite.

Hmm. God knows.

The bit where she looks down the trap door into the cellar got a big laugh in the screening I was at. I don't think this film was playing with the conventions of the genre. I think bits like that were just shitty.

loved this 100%

The bit where she looks down the trap door into the cellar got a big laugh in the screening I was at, too (Rio, Dalston).

I agree the bit with the medium seemed completely pointless and tacked-on, although the memory of it has spooked me out in the hours since.

Thought the ending was a bit shabby, predictable, obvious but the rest of it was quite effective - del Toro's hand very clearly in there.

There were lots of lines in there from Devil's Backbone, have to say. Of course the line "What is a ghost?" is obviously quite likely to appear in more than one ghost movie, but the medium's following speech talking about what a ghost was reminded me straight away of the opening sequence of DB.

Thought this was really effective. The surprising thing was how little it reminded me of "Devil's Backbone", given the setting. Then, again, that's from different perspective, in a different time, in a different part of the country, and has a finale which is closer to a Leone Western than anything in "The Orphanage" .

Thinking about it, the scene with the mediums is crucial in that it gives an explanation for what happened after the heroine initially left the orphanage which is incomplete, and which comes from an unreliable source: the husband and police don't believe it, the heroine does, and they think she's crazy. This sets up the rest of the film. If the story had come out through some kind of police breakthrough, it would ALL have come out. The movie would probably be over at that point, and it would certainly be a different movie.

As for the ending, it does soften what is an utterly harrowing conclusion, and you may disagree with the director's decision to do this. I don't think its a last-minute cop-out, though. It's foreshadowed specifically by the conversation about 'Peter Pan', and more generally by the heroine's desire to return to the orphanage, and to rescue children.

I think it would have been pretty easy, if the screenwriter felt that exposition was really necessary, to work it in elsewhere and not take up 30 minutes with it.

Yeah, I felt the whole film needed 20 minutes shaving off it somewhere...but perhaps I expect too much for these types of films to be snappy and slick.

I don't know if the ending - like the ending of Pan's Labyrinth - got a slating for being too sentimental, but I don't think that was my problem with it anyway. It just seemed too much of a sacrifice that, er, what happened in the end was the only way for the ghosts to be happy. And it was a bit too much of a leap to think that, after months of looking for his missing son, Carlos was pretty okay with that solution.

I did think Belén Rueda was bloody good. She's good in Mar adentro, too.

Yeah, I felt the whole film needed 20 minutes shaving off it somewhere...

Definitely.

When the old lady was run over, why and *how* exactly did the husband give her mouth-to-mouth when her whole lower jaw was missing?

This is a very good point.

Maybe he was *that* bad at mouth-to-mouth...

I think it's probably possible, if you can find and control some sort of an airway, but very messy. Ask a medic, but be prepared for the kind of reminiscences that you won't ever be able to get out of your mind.

Oh snap: http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=1319

4 stars?

A few edge haloes here and there, and a combing-like effect surrounds the investigator's hand at the beginning of the 10th chapter stop, but this is a near-perfect transfer, with rich black levels, accurate skin tones, and impeccable shadow delineation. The audio is spotless though, boasting vibrant surround work that really booms on the DTS 6.1 track, especially when it rains.

sounds like a rave to me

not sure that watching this while home alone at night was such a good idea. but i'm halfway thru and won't be able to relax until i get to the end anyway.

gaping monstrosity that is the crazy woman's face really scared the shit out of me.

I am pretty easily scared by scary movies but give me a break with this suggestive unseen horror bullshit pls.

It's not scary, but I did enjoy it, alright.

Devils' Backbone > The Others > The Orphanage