El Orfanato Muy El Scary!

Went to see The Orphanage last night. Guillermo Del Toro produced the film and Juan Antonio Bayona directs. This is essentially Bayona's first big film outing and the short and sweet of it is it did NOT disappoint. The film focuses on Laura [awesomely played by Belén Rueda], who returns to the house where she grew up with her adopted son Simon and husband to open up an orphanage to help children.

Laura's ill son begins to have vivid accounts of his imaginary friends who he plays games with. This comes to a frightening head one day during a party when Simon disappears. Laura then follows a trail of clues left behind by Simon's "imaginary friends" in hopes to find him.

That's about all I can say without giving away too much. What I can say is today, as I write this, my sphincter is sore from clenching. This movie slowly builds to a good 8 or 9 on the sphincter clench scale [U.N. Standard Sphincter Clenching Scale or U.N.S.S.C.S]. Seriously, there are points where you can cut the tension in the air with a knife. Hide and go seek with ghosts makes me VERY uncomfortable. I do have a suspicion that this film is to Rueda as Poltergeist is to Tobe Hooper. I say that because it seems Guillermo Del Toro's [or in Hooper's case, Spielberg] fingerprints are all over this fuckin' movie. I need to read up, because maybe these guys are drinkin' buddies or something and it was more a collaborative effort that Rueda put his name on, but the only thing missing was some crazy shit in jars on the shelf.

I want to write something like "oh man, the thing with the THING jumpin' out was all like...AHHH!" but that would be too much of a spoiler I think. Just look at the picture above and that kinda' tells you everything you need to know. There is a very fine line between "childlike" and "holy shitballs scary", and this film dances over it multiple times. This was very much in the vein of The Devil's Backbone, but more chilling and if you can believe, more tragic. I might've cut the movie off 5 minutes earlier but I can say that about a handful of films that like to wrap it up a little cleaner than I care for. But even so, the film was phenomenal and I can't recommend it enough. Del Toro is really starting to set a specific style to Spanish horror, giving it a flavor all its own similar to Italian Giallo's in the 70's and Asian Horror today.

More MORE I say!

Trailer: