The Orphanage Review

[Perpetuo Carlson]

Nowhere is an excellent example of why it is more frightening to await something than to experience it. "The Orphanage" has every opportunity to descend into routine shock and horror, or even into the pits with the slasher pictures, but it only pulls the trigger a couple of times. The rest is all waiting, anticipating, dreading. We need the genuine jolt that comes about midway, to let us see what the movie is capable of. The rest is fear.

Hitchcock was very wise about this. In his book-length conversation with Truffaut, he used a famous example to explain the difference between surprise and suspense. If people are seated at a table and a bomb explodes, that is surprise. If they are seated at a table, and you know there's a bomb under the table attached to a ticking clock, but they continue to play cards -- that's suspense. There's a bomb under "The Orphanage" for excruciating stretches of time.

That makes the film into a superior ghost story, if indeed there are ghosts in it. I am not sure: They may instead be the experience or illusion of ghosts in the mind of the heroine, and since we see through her eyes, we see what she sees and are no more capable than she is of being certain. That means when she walks down a dark staircase, or into an unlit corridor or a gloomy room, we're tense and fearful, whether we're experiencing a haunted house or a haunted mind. And when she follows her son into a pitch-black cave, her flashlight shows only a thread of light through unlimited menace.

The movie centers on Laura (Belen Rueda), who as a young girl was raised in the orphanage before being taken away one day and adopted. Now in her 30s, she has returned with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their young son Simon (Roger Princep) to buy the orphanage and run it as a home for sick or disabled children. She has memories here, most of them happy, she believes, but as images begin to swim into her mind and even her vision, she has horrifying notions about what might have happened to the playmates she left behind on the summer day 30 years ago.

Simon, too, seems disturbed, and since no other children have arrived, he creates imaginary playmates. One of them, a boy with a sack over his head, he shows in a drawing to his mother, who is startled because this very image exists in her own mind. Does that mean -- well, what could it mean? Telepathy? Or the possibility that Simon, too, is the product of her imagination? The line between reality and fantasy is so blurred in the film that it may even be, however unlikely, that Simon exists and is imagining her.

It matters not for us, because we are inside Laura's mind, no matter what. And when a decidedly sinister "social worker" (Montserrat Carulla) turns up, Simon learns after her visit that he is adopted and dying. He apparently runs away, even though he needs daily medication. His parents spend months searching for him, putting posters everywhere, convinced he is not dead. But many children may have died at the orphanage. The parents consult a psychic (Geraldine Chaplin), who possibly provides what people claim they want from a psychic (but really don't): the truth.

The film, a Spanish production directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Guillermo Del Toro ("The Devil's Backbone," "Pan's Labyrinth"), is deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans. It lingers to create atmosphere, a sense of place, a sympathy with the characters, instead of rushing into cheap thrills. Photographed by Oscar Faura, it has an uncanny way of re-creating that feeling we get when we're in a familiar building at an unfamiliar time, and we're not quite sure what to say if we're found there, and we might have just heard something, and why did the lights go out?

Around the 2004 [U.S. Presidential] election I became fascinated with propaganda. The Bush administration was weighing heavily on me, and I remember they had the Healthy Forest Act, which actually called for increased logging and the destruction of forests. I had it in my head that such things were spin, but in studying North Korea I realized, oh no, that is propaganda.

My friend was part of an NGO planting apple orchards in North Korea. He also worked with orphanages in the South. He was originally from North Korea and was an orphan of the Korean War. He had good relations with both sides and had done nothing but humanitarian work for decades there, so he was trusted. He believed in my book and used his influence to help me.

There were four of us, and we were officially called VIP tourists. My friend was treated with great enthusiasm. I was just ignored, which was wonderful. I was looking for bits of verisimilitude and I was free to collect that. I wanted to know: Are there trashcans on the street? Are the streets concrete, pavement, or brick? Were there fire stations? Did people have mailboxes on their houses? What type of shoes did people wear?

1- How was the local ABV Coordinator/staff and the support provided in-country?

Maria Elena asked me daily how my volunteering was going. She came in to the orphanage a couple times to see how things were going. She also prepared special food for me as I'm vegetarian and she helped me get the tours for the weekends.

2- What was the most surprising thing you experienced?

The most surprising thing I experienced about the program is that nobody speaks English at the orphanage. Its important to know at least some Spanish. I was surprised that Maria Elenas house had wifi, I wasnt expecting that. I was surprised by the beauty of Cusco. The city of Cusco has so much rich history and beautiful sights.

5.1-Other things volunteers should know before coming here:

I didnt have a problem adjusting to the elevation but many tourists do. I would take the necessary precautions so that you will adjust well to the elevation difference.

7- How would you describe your accommodation, meals, security, friendliness, quality others:

The meals were delicious. I really appreciated Ali who cooked lunch for us in Maria Elenas home.

In the bloody revolution, gods were all but wiped out. Ever since, the children they left behind have been imprisoned in an orphanage, watched day and night by the ruthless Guard. Any who show signs of divine power vanish from their beds in the night, all knowledge of their existence denied.

The plot too, hops around with abandon making it hard to follow at times. This a first for me but I really think this would have benefited from being a series, as nothing is given the detail it deserves and I really would have loved more time with each character. Everything was underdeveloped and so nothing truly had an impact on me, it was a shame because I could almost taste the potential but everything was jumbled.

Huntsman: The Orphanage prompts many questions. Who is the huntsman? How did 12 orphans vanish without a trace from a rural Illinois orphanage in 1897? For that matter, where can I pick up that sweet smartphone that talks to the dead and never loses a charge? Huntsman doesn't answer all of these questions, but some of its chief pleasures lie in rummaging among old suitcases and piles of dusty prosthetics for clues to the answers. When paired with its creepy namesake, it's a premise that manages to deliver some genuine chills, but it's not long before its web of creepypasta stories ensnare you more than any sense of dread. That's both a blessing and a curse.

ShadowShifters, the studio behind the project, created a game that frightens more by ambience than with the jump scares, blood, and violence that define many horror games (and movies) these days. Many of its most effective chills actually spring from the expectation of scares common in horror games that came before it, and indeed, the first tentative steps of the game lead you down a wooded road, past a phone booth, and up to the wrought iron gates of a decaying institution. A casual onlooker could be fooled into thinking you were playing through the start of Outlast.

But there's no blood here, and if there were, it's had over 100 years to fade away. Perfect opportunities for jump scares present themselves and pass, and even 20 minutes into the game you might still believe that this really is just an abandoned complex in modern Illinois, and that the falling crosses and self-closing doors really do owe their existence to nothing besides the wind. By the time I came across the rare wonder of a chalkboard writing a helpful tutorial by itself, I found myself not so much spooked as grateful for the novelty.

Thank goodness you have the best smartphone in the world at your disposal. Its constant presence puts Huntsman: The Orphanage in the same class as "weaponless" horror games in the vein of Outlast and Amnesia, and most of the time you use it as a flashlight but, alas, with none of the dread that springs from losing battery power. The phone's existence comes into its own, however, when the voices and images of the 12 missing children come crackling through it, begging you to find their favorite belongings and return them to their graves so their souls can be free of the dreaded huntsman.

Sometimes they interrupt you with flashes of video when you get near said items. Sometimes they pop up and tell you stories with clues from their past when you hover the phone over the portraits scattered throughout the orphanage. And in most cases, the excellent voice work for the accompanying stories makes up for some of the limitations of the surrounding visuals. Tales of chopping off hands at the woodpile suggest that these orphans aren't angelic innocents, and some of them speak with just enough hints of menace that you might balk at placating them with gifts. They don't even let up on the creepy act after you've found their junk and tossed it on their hidden graves.

It's fitting that the voice work excels over so much of the rest of the experience. (If there's a drawback to this focus, it's that you have to stare at their photos the whole time to hear the full narration.) The orphans spill their lines, dropping hints based on their histories, and then you set out to dig in and around the inky-dark ruins of the orphanage to find the relevant items. It's tougher than it sounds. The relevant items don't glow or otherwise make their presence known, and since you can't interact with some of them unless you crouch or lie down, you may not even know you're looking at one even though you're staring right at it.

3a8082e126