Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. You’re about to get really, really sick of me… if you aren’t already. The last few days I’ve been lost in two different worlds. In one I’ve been watching over 30 films, up to 5 a day, and in the other I’ve been digitally killing aliens and zombies in a suit of Spartan armor. Now I’m in the final stages of Fantastic Fest and I’ll be bombarding you with reviews, some of which I’ve had to hold because they’re films I’m judging for the AMD Next Wave competition for the fest. I have to say, I’ve seen a lot of strong films and a surprisingly high amount of them have come out of Spain. Case in point, THE ORPHANAGE which just screened as one of the AICN secret shows. We’ve been hearing strong word on this film from other festivals, including the constantly growing FrightFest in the UK. It’s also a film Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, which put it immediately on people’s radar. In tone, THE ORPHANAGE reminds me of a marriage between Alejandro Amenabar’s THE OTHERS and del Toro’s own THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE. It’s a confident, atmospheric tale about a woman who moves her family into an old home on the coast. She grew up there, an orphan, and has since held the desire to help other children the way she was helped as a child. She moves there to start up a small care center. Not another orphanage, but a home for children with disabilities. Her son has always had a big imagination, but something is off when they begin to settle in. His new imaginary friends are probably not all that imaginary. The flick is a debut feature film from Juan Antonio Bayona and like I said above, his direction is confident, sure and has a stylistic flourish, but is about as traditional as you can get. There is little to no computer effects, the shots are long and steady and the focus is on the characters and atmosphere. I’d call this film more a mystery than a horror flick, but it does have really scary moments and one particular creepy character, a kid in a scarecrow mask. He’s one I could easily see in a Neca toy line… maybe in conjunction with a Devil’s Backbone figure or something. How about that, Neca? A dead kid line? You can also throw in those little buggers that attack Roger in DAWN OF THE DEAD and maybe that creepy fucker outside the window in Tobe Hooper’s SALEM’S LOT. Sergio Sanchez’s writing is smart and the mystery isn’t overplayed. The only real complaint I have is that it takes a little too long for our main character, Laura (Belen Rueda) to start unraveling it. Without giving too much away, they set up how to unravel the mystery in the first act, but she doesn’t actually do it until the end. However, the middle is still strong. So often in these types of movies the middle is for nap time, but there’s a great POLTERGEISTish subplot involving paranormal investigators that is really tense. There’s also some really important development between Laura and her husband (Fernando Cayo) that really struck a chord with me. I dug the hell out of this film. I wish it was the standard. Intelligent, creepy, character and atmosphere driven horror. We don’t get enough of that these days. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
