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The Orphanageby Ari
Poorly written and unevenly paced, The Orphanage makes an attempt at a touching family drama between its obvious plotting and cheap frights. Is it just me or is the freaky, deformed ghost child really played out? How many more times do we need to see a creepy little boy or girl run around a haunted house? It's neither scary nor compelling, especially when the filmmakers rely on sudden noises or eerie build-ups that never result in anything important. The Orphanage spends a good portion of its second act with these little moments that seem to be developing something scary but always result with some anti-climax. There's about 35 minutes of actual story in this film, and that story isn't particularly thoughtful or dramatic. When one of the characters mentions the story of Peter Pan, you know precisely where it's going. Pan's Labyrinth was filled with references, but del Toro managed to work them into his story without totally blowing his own plot. They weren't terribly subtle, but they didn't ruin the tension that was building either. Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez blow the entire thing very early on with that Peter Pan reference, and the rest of the film does an uninspired job of working it back around. This is as tedious and obvious as a ghost story could be, with some rather inept set-pieces that baffle rather than thrill.
Laura (Belén Rueda) returns to the house where she was raised with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and her 7 year-old son Simon (Roger Príncep). The house was an orphanage when Laura was young and has a disturbing history. Laura was adopted before a terrible incident occured with a deformed child named Tomas (Óscar Casas). but this naturally comes back to haunt them all once they return to the home. Somehow, perhaps because of his illness (but the film never really explains it), Simon is able communicate with the dead. He makes some new friends, mainly Tomas, and is informed that he is an adopted child and will soon be dead. Simon tries to explain his new friends to his mother, but she thinks it's all his imagination. After he suddenly disappears, Laura is sent on an emotional journey to communicate with the dead and find her lost son. It's at this point that the film loses almost all interest. Because Tomas is deformed, he wears a sack over his head to cover his hideous features. The first time we see him he snarls at Laura (he sounds like a creature out of one of del Toro's films) and attacks her, but then later his tragic story is revealed and he's sweet and normal. The second act gradually develops Laura's understanding of the situation. Too much time is spent with silly shocks and the relationship she has with her doubting husband. This builds to an unintentionally funny sequence where they contact a professor and his colleagues to visit the home and contact the dead spirits. Imagine if The Frighteners tried to be a serious drama about Michael J. Fox contacting ghosts and you have this sequence. It's ludicrous. By the time The Orphanage reaches its expected conclusion, I felt too distanced from the emotion of the story to care about Laura, Simon or the baffling Tomas. It's obviously difficult to balance horror and drama in one sequence, but Bayona struggles with both aspects even in their individual moments. The straight horror is flat, the drama is stilted and dull. Bland cinematography and messy performances don't help the troubled screenplay, and the poor editing includes some terrible jump-cuts and an injury on a beach that I still can't figure out. The opening credits sequence is neat, though. |
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