A deeply disturbing film experience

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2008)

Rarely do I go into the darkened cinema really expecting -- or even necessarily wanting -- to be truly scared by the movie I'm about to watch. There's every type of "horror movie" experience out there, and I personally tend to prefer the kind where I really don't take anything too seriously, where I can wait for the next person to be killed by the monsters and laugh at the ridiculous way that it all happens. But "El Orfanato" is not that type of horror movie. It is about people who you'd want to care about and even though the subject matter is supernatural at times there's a very real feeling about all the proceedings that put the film on another level from the typical scare-fest. I'm not going to say that the characters were completely compelling for me or that it was a great drama, but I would say that I got so wrapped up in the story and the suspense that watching the film eventually became a somewhat unpleasant experience. I'm a smoker and I've hardly ever felt so much like stepping out to calm my nerves in the middle of a movie, yet I didn't want to miss anything. Off the top of my head the only kind of experience I could compare this to was seeing "Poltergeist" as a little kid in the theater, when the characters were kids exactly like me and their fears were the same as my own. There's also a sad quality to this film that reminds me of George Sluizer's "Spoorloos" (aka "The Vanishing").
I won't go too deeply into the story, but it's a haunted house type of deal about a woman named Laura (Belen Rueda) who used to be a ward of a defunct orphanage which she and her husband (Fernando Cayo) decide to fix up to use as a home for children with special needs. Unbeknownst to himself, their own young son Simon (Roger Princep) is such a child, in his case he has been diagnosed with HIV at birth. Simon has imaginary friends who he plays with (like Danny in "The Shining", the parents don't take it too seriously at first) and when he suddenly disappears without a trace Laura becomes convinced that his most recent "friend" might be a ghost from the orphanage's past who has come back to haunt them.
I was very impressed with all the performances and with the technical aspects of the film as well. The conclusion was very disturbing even if it doesn't make complete logical sense. I felt that the director did such a good job of establishing the mood of the setting that he was able to accomplish pretty much everything he set out to do as far as the suspense aspects of the film. There's a couple moments of out and out terror but for the most part it's the type of horror that fans of atmospheric horror will enjoy. There's even a theme of fantasy running through the film, a Peter Pan motif. So on the whole I enjoyed it but it sure isn't going to make anybody's lists of the feel-good films of 2008. In its more serious or personal aspects it's a meditation on the cruelty that we inflict on each other and through the medium of the supernatural it explores the ways in which we can deal with pain and suffering.
A very effective horror film, one of the best I've seen in many years.