My coworker friend, Carrie with a K, casually showed me today over lunch the below trailer for The Orphanage (2007) and I was immediately pulled in, I mean, before the trailer was over I was like, Yes, yes, I’m watching this movie tonight, yes! And so I did.
Granted, I knew of this Guillermo del Toro movie, I knew it was a Spanish production, I knew it was about kid ghosts at an orphanage, but that was pretty much it (had not watched the trailer prior to today). And yet, all that basic info was not enough for me to wanting to watch the movie as, in my mind, it seemed I had seen one too many orphan-related movies already so this one felt unnecessary... blasphemy! Sometimes my own ignorance amuses me more than anything #noshame.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Okay, so let’s slow down for a sec. Alright. The movie focuses mainly on the beautiful mother-son relationship between Laura and Simon, as well as on how Laura and her husband Carlos face the emptiness of their lives once Simon goes missing. The ghosts and the house are secondary in my opinion.
It is important to mention that little Simon was adopted and sick (HIV) and both of those two things were kept secret from him by his parents, but revealed to him by his ghost friends. That is right, little Simon was able to see dead people because—as medium Aurora cleverly put it—he was close to death. By the way, medium Aurora did a thing (how to you call it when you go into a trance and talk to the dead? Yeah, that…) at the parents’ house after little Simon had been missing for nine months. Aurora revealed a ton of disturbing information that sounded true to Laura because Laura used to live there as a kid; back in the day that house was an orphanage, but now it was Laura’s house as she bought it and was planning to re-open it as an orphanage for kids with disabilities.
So, okay, now that medium Aurora had sort of confirmed what little Simon had once said to Laura (imaginary friends) plus the things Laura knew she had seen (kid with hood), she was convinced there were ghosts in the house and that she was going to ‘play their games’ in order to find her missing son. Oh yeah, the imaginary friends from Simon were her own real friends from when she was a kid orphan herself. That’s right, the kids died (poisoning) after Laura got adopted, so their souls stayed trapped in the house.
I will not ruin the ending for you as I believe you deserve to see it on your own if you have not done so yet. The movie demands to be watched from beginning to end with the outmost attention to detail; the sounds, the visuals, the characters, the dialogue, the tense moments, the scary moments, the tender moments, they all work together to bring you an elevated horror experience.
In this new horror era where profitable movies are produced left and right, where squalid sequels and prequels are put in theaters every few months, where horror stories threaten to look down on true horror fans, it is our responsibility to speak up when something with value and weight comes our way. So listen up horror family, this is me telling you to save your dollars, skip the Annabelle’s and the Chucky’s of the world and watch online The Orphanage (2007) as soon as possible and let quality horror enrich your life.
Because we are worth it,
-Marath
© 2016-2019