El Horror

Today, I went to see El Orfanato -- "The Orphanage," as it's known in English. This is a horror/suspense film from Spain brought to prominence by the Toronto Film Festival, among others. It sounded like a fun presmise, and I was interested to see another country's take on the horror genre, particularly when the U.S.'s take on it has basically devolved into either so-called "torture porn" or remaking horror films from other countries.

The film is the story of a married couple living in a house that was converted from the old orphanage where the wife grew up. Their young adopted son goes missing shortly after speaking of "imaginary friends" he's been playing with, and soon it seems that he may actually have been taken by the ghosts of dead children that still haunt the place.

Occasionally, the movie evoked a sense of some other films I've seen. Perhaps it was just me searching for a way to get my bearings in what was literally a foreign environment. But for whatever the reason, there were touches of Poltergeist, maybe a dash of The Others, and one or two other U.S. movies.

Still, the movie undeniably brought something different to the table. For example, though there were definitely moments of gore, they didn't really have anything to do with the ghosts themselves. In an time when the least gruesome movie ghosts still typically take forms as ghoulish as the evil wet girl from The Ring, the ghosts in this movie were much more mundane in appearance -- though still effectively creepy at the right moments.

The conclusion of the tale was a satisfying one, although the pace in getting there was rather slow at times. One could chalk this up to cultural differences, but I did find myself checking my watch here and there up until what felt like the halfway point of the movie.

One could easily imagine how an American director would remake this same basic story, juicing it with more moments of scariness, making the ghosts more sinister in appearance, and so forth. And that might make a good movie too, though in that translation, the film would lose many of the things that made it distinctive. Although I guess I am saying I'd want it to have a tweak or two before I'd give it a more enthusiastic endorsement. I give it a B-.