Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 1/24/08 Section: Movies

A mysterious figure in a sack mask appears in the Spanish horror film "The Orphanage."

You've never eaten a Sour Patch Kid in your life. You reach for the bag only to pull out a green one. Then another. You think the third time could be a change in flavor, but it's another green. "The Orphanage" is that bag you're eating, with one catch: you never reach the red ones at the bottom.

Laura (Belén Rueda) and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) are two normal adoptive parents to Simón, an imaginative child with HIV who lives in a grandiose world of adventure. The couple arranges to reopen an orphanage - a vestige of Laura's own childhood - that houses sinister secrets. When Simón disappears at their open house celebration, Laura embarks on a lengthy mission to find him (we're talking months), targeting her ever-increasing notion that Simón's made-up friends are the culprits.

As she slips more and more into her tireless infatuation, viewers slip more and more into expectance without ever achieving something tasty. Of course, it's natural for a mother, even an adoptive one, to obsess over a lost child. But there's a point when Carlos throws in the towel and Laura clings to dead-end beliefs. Unconditional love or not, viewers don't get that passionate. Rueda is quite the dramatic actress, but she leads us to her own pool of tranquilizers and memories. There's nothing scary about a junkie wallowing in a vat of sadness.

"The Orphanage," therefore, isn't about the children at all. "Pan's Labyrinth" producer-guru Guillermo del Toro leaves those tools out to rust, including a pseudo-horror rainstorm of miscued screams and misleading plot points.

The glue supporting our attention to detail is manically skewed to the point of confusion. An old house on a windy bluff in the middle of nowhere occupied by "imaginary" debilitated children is a hefty package that carries potential with it. In "The Orphanage," it's ruined beyond control.

There are, however, a few personae that come in clutch on the creep factor: a sullen-eyed medium brought in to contact the dead and an elderly social worker who bites a gruesome death reminiscent of the closet scene in "The Ring." But it's not enough as the film crumbles into another overly-hyped letdown machine.

The Spaniards behind the picture might have a touch of street-cred and most certainly have the power to skyrocket their status, but it won't be with "The Orphanage."

If only they could reach the red ones at the bottom.

THE GRADE: D
Tranquilizers, treasure hunts and kids that aren't there, oh my!


Drew Nelson is a Reporter staff writer

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools