Loved it -- and I don't like horror films

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2008)

I am not much on horror movies. In fact, I'm known as El Pollo (The Chicken) when it comes to movies. For example, I hate movies which revel in violence: I would no more see "No Country for Old Men" than I would go quail "hunting" with Dick Cheney. Will I see "Sweeney Todd?" Sure I will -- just as soon as pigs fly out my rear end whistling the "Colonel Bogey March."
But I went to see "El Orfanato" because I gathered that it was more of a ghost story than a horror film, and that it was more of a thoughtful reflection on The Unseen World, like "Don't Look Now," or "The Sixth Sense," than a movie whose main purpose was to scare the bejabbers out of the audience.
And so it turned out to be. Which isn't to say that it didn't scare the bejabbers out of the audience! Several times.
The film comes from Spain, and stars Spanish TV star Belen Rueda as Laura. We learn that Laura was an inmate of an orphanage, that she was adopted away from the orphanage, and that she has, at the present time, returned to the old property with her husband and adopted child to create a home for neglected children.
This movie, like "Sixth Sense" (one of my all-time favorite films) is about love and death. In fact, I think they both share the same message, that is, that helping those most in need of help gives life meaning.
I enjoyed "The Orphanage," and I think you will too. If you just plain don't like being frightened in movies, then stay away. But there's no glorified violence and -- you know how the music builds and builds, more and more ominous, and the thing which is about to attack gets closer and closer? There is some of that, but mostly it's used as exposition -- it's when you're not really expecting anything that the director pushes the bejabbers button, leaving the audience chuckling -- like, "whoo -- THAT was a GOOD one!"
I think folks who like a good haunted house story will like this, and people who like a good love story will like it as well.