31 Days of Halloween: Day 23

The Orphanage (2007) Director: Juan Antonio Bayona

Regardless of genre, a bad ending can ruin what otherwise is a good film.  Unfortunately, I think the Spanish horror film, The Orphanage, exemplifies this.

A husband and wife, Laura and Carlos, live in, and plan to reopen the orphanage in which Laura lived when she was a little girl.  The two also have an adopted son, Simón, who has imaginary friends.  Soon after moving to their new home, Simón begins to meet new imaginary friends.  These new imaginary friends are of course more than they first appear to be.  Simón goes missing and his parents desperately search for him using all the resources that they can.

During the course of the investigation secrets are discovered about the orphanage, and about one of its workers.  These moments of revelation are some of the creepiest in the film, simply because the idea of these things happening alone are unnerving.  As each new puzzle piece is discovered, the truth becomes all the more disturbing.

Structurally, The Orphanage plays it close to many haunted house films that came before it, such as The Uninvited (1944), The Changeling (1980), and The Devil's Backbone (2001).  It's well crafted, with an intriguing mystery, but there is never anything that sticks out as particularly groundbreaking.  One seen has the obligatory medium talking to/looking at the dead in the house, and in order to make the scene come off as fresh, it is is presented through the perspective of video cameras set up throughout the house.  But the scene is extremely predictable, and because of that most of the potential tension was lost.

This is scary, for now.

Like the medium scene, there are moments that are creepy, but ultimately fall short of their potential due to bad decisions by the filmmaker.  Scenes that begin quiet and creepy are soon interrupted with a loud noise and bombastic music.  One key example is a scene where Laura plays a game with the ghosts.  Once the tone makes this change, all potential for horror is immediately lost.  Due to this, atmosphere is rarely achieved because tones of horror are ever changing.

This is most apparent in the films ending.  There is a wonderful reveal that hits the audience right in the gut.  All the pieces have come together, and a truly bleak picture is drawn.  I was so satisfied by this reveal, but then something else happened, the movie didn't end.  It goes on for another 5-10 minutes and becomes something absurdly sentimental.  Everything that had been achieved earlier in the film was lost, and all hope of leaving a lasting effect on a viewer vanished. 

It seems that Bayona was attempting to give the film an element of heart seen in the work of Guillermo del Toro (who produced The Orphanage), like in The Devil's Backbone.  The problem is that in del Toro's films, this heart is apparent from the beginning and is fully paid off in the climax.  Here, in The Orphanage, the heart is only teased at in the beginning, and then comes at you like an avalanche in the end.  It wasn't earned, and feels forced and dishonest to the rest of the film.  The film could have left with an impact similar to Ringu (1998), but instead left no impact at all.