| Title | The golden age of horror: The Orphanage (2008) |
| Author | Chris Hornbostel and Rob Morton |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | October 16, 2014 |
Rob: Why not cut to the chase? I think The Orphanage is the best horror film of the past two decades. Maybe more. It has all the ingredients I personally love most in a horror movie including a haunted house, a disfigured child, and a deliciously gory close-up..
Read the full articleI remember seeing this in the theater with a group of middle school girls behind me watching it for Spanish class. They were annoying for the first 15-20 minutes as they'd call out to each other whenever they heard a word they understood. Then they started getting quieter and quieter...
Anyways, I enjoyed this movie but definitely wasn't as enamored with it as you guys. I found the ending to be beautiful and sad and extremely fitting. I like that the film pretends it's a happy ending, because Laura thinks it's a happy ending, but it's not. The ghosts are taking her and she's dead and her spirit is trapped there with them. Anyways, I like that contradiction between the way the characters are reacting to the end and our understanding of these events.
Lastly, it's too bad you guys didn't qualify Pan's Labyrinth as horror. I loved that movie and I certainly found it to be damn scary (it of course also has a great sad ending that our main character thinks is a happy ending).
I love when movies don't use a lot of gore, and then out of nowhere hit you with something gruesome. That lady's face after she gets hit by the bus(?), holy hell.
Right? And when the scene starts you think "Oh, they're not going to show this..." and Bayona doesn't...and then right at the end, YIKES!
I haven't seen this film, but my first thought after reading about Spanish movies was Pan's Labyrinth (and the also excellent Devil's Backbone).
