“Carol Anne - listen to me. Do NOT go into the light. Stop where you are. Turn away from it. Don't even look at it.”
-- Diane Freeling from Poltergeist
“Now please leave. I am not going back, and I am... I would not be any good to you if I did.”
-- Ellen Ripley from Aliens
In 2006, Laura Dern gave a brave performance in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. Regardless of what one thought of the film, Laura Dern’s character was a testament to her willingness to break new, unsettling ground for her old friend. She is the glue that holds Inland Empire together. As much as I admire Julie Christie, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Keri Russell and Tilda Swinton for the great work they did in 2007, it is Belen Rueda who gives the bravest and most gut wrenching performance of last year in Juan Antonio Bayona’s debut film, The Orphanage. It is a wonderful old fashioned ghost story which gets under your skin. It is a chilling Spanish horror story. It is what you do not see that is truly terrifying in Mr. Bayona’s film. As Laura, Belen Rueda is the perfect character for us to latch onto and experience her trials and tribulations. Laura is in almost every scene of the film and she makes her character true in every way. She is as original as they come. Bayona’s greatest triumph, besides having Guillermo Del Toro as a producer, is that he is able to tell a standard horror story and make it fresh and truly frightening. What can be said about Mr. Del Toro is that he knows a good thing when he sees it; he has no interest in putting his name on junk. I expect nothing less from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone and Hellboy.
Laura is a fascinating protagonist-- a woman, who was an adopted orphan, who decides to buy the orphanage she was raised in and convert into a home for disabled children with her husband, Carlos (Fernando Coyo). Their plan is to restore the ex-orphanage and make it home for their son, Simon (Roger Princep). Simon is adopted and HIV positive, but he does not know these two details about himself. He has a very active imagination. He has imaginary friends. Why would she want to buy the very same orphanage she was raised in? This is never made clear, but Mr. Bayona and screenwriter, Sergio G. Sanchez supply enough food for thought throughout the film. In the beginning of the film, we see a young Laura playing a game with the other children outside the orphanage. After the game, she is adopted. What would possess her to come back here of all places? Is it a sense of nostalgia-- or is it a deeper sense of guilt? Guilt is one of the film’s strongest emotions? Guilt is a powerful undercurrent throughout the film. Is it guilt that made Laura adopt a child? Was it an obligation on her part to see to it that she return the favor and pay it forward? What else could be her driving motivation to adopt and to want to start a home for disabled children? Returning the home of her childhood is a very Ripley like gesture on her part. Is this any different than Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley returning to battle the monsters of her nightmares in Aliens?
Laura’s guilt manifests itself after the film’s central event. Laura and Carlos are throwing an open house party for children at their new home. Simon has already made new imaginary friends at the orphanage. The orphanage is located near the sea. There is a beach and a cave where mother and son go early on in the film. Simon starts to talk to someone in the cave, but Laura does not see anyone there. It would be easy to say he sees dead people like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, but this is not the same thing exactly. The Orphanage is a lot of things, but it is not a calling card for one trick pony storytelling. I liked The Sixth Sense, but this is a different story. At the party, the children wear masks. Laura has a nasty encounter with one of them. Somehow during this incident, Simon gets lost. His parents race down to the beach, to the cave, but he is nowhere to found. Simon is presumed dead, but Laura does not believe this at all. Laura is persistent in her search for her son. The second half of the film does play like a missing person’s investigation.
The house itself is an organic being. Like the best horror films and ghost stories, the structure itself is a pulsating and breathing organism. Bayona’s orphanage is not that different from the Bates Motel in Psycho; the horrible house in The Amityville Horror; the house in Burnt Offerings; the Overlook Hotel in The Shining and of course, the Freeling household in Poltergeist. Bayona gives us a complete symphony of dread with enough creaks, door slams and moans to keep us many nights for several lifetimes. Oscar Faura’s cinematography only heightens the mood while Fernando Velazquez’s haunting score does nothing to alleviate our fears. Speaking of Poltergeist, Laura invites a group of paranormal investigators to the house in a last act of desperation. Almost six months have gone by and there is no news about Simon. The investigators are led by Aurora, beautifully played by Geraldine Chaplin. There is someone poetic and perfectly fitting to have her play the part of a Medium. It is inspired casting. Aurora comes equipped with modern technology-- CCTV, Oscilloscopes and a vivid night vision display. There is a high tech séance and watching Aurora during this sequence is enthralling and frightening. She is witnessing the ghosts of the past-- incidents that happened at the orphanage long ago. How can Aurora help Laura find her son? Are the clues within the house and more importantly are there secrets within the house that could reveal his whereabouts? This part of the film owes a lot to Poltergeist and Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others.
With its high octane female cast, The Orphanage may be the horror film that Pedro Almodovar might have directed. Besides Belen Rueda and Geraldine Chaplin, there is also Mabel Rivera as a police psychologist and Montserrat Carulla as the old and enigmatic social worker, Benigna. This is an estrogen heavy horror story, but do not begin to mistake it for a pathetic Lifetime movie of the week. Bayona has given us an excellent cast of characters to follow in his film. Still, it is Rueda’s Linda who is the primary driving force of the film. Her determination and love for Simon is awe inspiring as she refuses to give up hope. One cannot mistake her love and the bravery she has as she turns the tables at the end of the film. She recreates the orphanage as it was in her childhood. She goes through a lot of work, but it is never too much if it means finding Simon. Her relentless pursuit reminds me of JoBeth Williams’ Diane Freeling in Poltergeist as she goes into the supernatural world to rescue her daughter, Carol Anne.
She also reminds me of Ripley going to rescue Newt from the Queen Mother Alien in Aliens. In some way she reminds me of Sally Farnham (Kim Darby) from the 1973 television film, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark-- a film that still gives me the creeps. Sally and her husband inherit her Father’s house, a creepy old Victorian mansion. They move in to renovate it. She unlocks her Father’s old study and removes bricks from a fireplace. After doing this, she starts to see small demon like creatures everywhere. Her husband thinks she is neurotic and that she is losing her mind. Laura does remind me in some ways of Sally, Diane Freeling and Ellen Ripley. Laura has a determination within her to find her son, no matter what the cost is to her. At the end of the day, the price will be very high, but under the watchful eye of Juan Antonio Bayona, it is a fresh take on a very old story. Thanks to a knock out performance by Belen Rueda, Laura is one of the bravest and boldest screen heroines in many years.
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