Hallowe'en Horror Movies - The Orphanage

What will I be watching over the spooky season? Since I watch new horror movies all year round, I try to rewatch the ones I really love over Hallowe'en. An exercise in nostalgia? Of course!

First up is a very modern film with a strong Gothic sensibility. The Orphanage/El Orfanato,is one of the most effective screen ghost stories to come out of Spain. The film works in part because the story is itself extremely good. A couple with a seriously ill child buy an old orphanage and convert it into a special home. But the lingering spirit of a little boy who suffered a terrible fate in the house disrupts their lives forever.



The film, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, manages to make many conventional haunted house tropes work perfectly. The son's imaginary friends, the lighthouse on the headland, a strange encounter in the sea caves - all combine to produce a sense of mystery, and gradually escalating menace. The use of children's games, the arrival of a disturbing and disturbed person with a tale to tell, and the psychic investigation with hi-tech instruments - it's all here, used to amazing effect.

When the horror finally becomes immediate, unavoidable, the reactions of the characters always convince. As the tormented and heroic Laura, Belen Rueda is superb. The actual ghost is original, convincing, ultimately tragic. When it premiered at Cannes in 2007 this film received a ten minute standing ovation. Watch it, and you will see why.

Update: Re-watched it last night, and was just as moved and enthralled as before. I had forgotten how effortlessly the script by Sergio G. Sanchez fits together all the disparate aspects off the haunting. Also, for a premier feature Bayona directs with extraordinary confidence. Geraldine Chaplin as Aurora the medium appears for a relatively short time, but in the great tradition of this kind of film she is also central. She offers a counterpoint to the movie's villain. There is no better film about a haunting, and what a haunting might mean.