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The Orphanage is tender, terrifying By Phillip Ross Michael Krop Sr. High Important: This article was last updated on January 10, 2008. Please call ahead to confirm hours, prices, dates and other information.
Foreign films never seem to get the same amount of attention on this side of the Atlantic that American movies do overseas. It could be because Americans are unfamiliar with the actors, or it could be because they often use fewer special effects than American movies. However, inherently lost in domestic audiences' search for movies with a "bigger bang" are genuinely entertaining European films, neither dry nor unexciting. The Orphanage (opening Dec. 28), I hope will not fall victim to such circumstance. Regardless of its subtitles, which are often enough to scare away some audiences, the film has enough real terror to draw in the most jaded viewers. Bucking the recent trend of boo scares and loud noises, the film draws its horror from the nervous acting of Belen Rueda, who plays Laura, a mother who returns to the orphanage where she was raised, only to have her son, Simon, go missing. The situation is more complicated than it seems. Simon, who already had imaginary friends, met a new one when he moved into the orphanage — Tomas, a boy who likes to take from people what is most valuable to them and who wears a sack over his head. Much of the movie's considerable chills are linked to the paranormal. Laura dedicates the entirety of the film to finding her son and playing Tomas' treasure-hunt game. As the film's mysteries begin to unfold with relatively little complication, the horror remains constant, and the audience's emotional investment in the proceedings increases exponentially. The film is truly a rarity in the sense that it is a movie as equally frightening as it is moving. At times, it is apparent that this is a foreign film. Certain paranormal scenes carry a dreamlike quality that would be considered too weird for American-made movies. But in The Orphanage, such scenes are imperative to its story. One particular sequence involving an elderly psychic medium is among the movie's most tense moments. Other moments are undoubtedly scary, although the film refuses to play into certain expectations. Those surprises color much of the film, and it is all the scarier for it. For a movie capable of making an audience feel chills, The Orphanage is surprisingly deep. Full of symbolism, the story is much more about one woman's love for her son than it is about a haunted villa. It will captivate you, shock you and wreak havoc on your nerves. Whether foreign or domestic, no movie in years has been so beautifully terrifying. |
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