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Guillermo del Toro brings another spanish hit to american audiences

I guess it’s what is known as a “cult of personality” when you just adore a public personality so much that they can’t do wrong by you. I’ve gotten these creepy fan-like sort of notions about celebrities before. Prior to Legends of the Fall I felt this way about Brad Pitt. The Secret Window being the exception, I still feel this way about Johnny Depp. But it isn’t just American heartthrobs that I feel this way about, there are a number of directors and actors whose decisions I trust no matter how bad a preview looks. But unfailingly they will let me down. The Coen brothers made Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Scorsese made The Gangs of New York. Kubrick made Eyes Wide Shut. But so far, Guillermo del Toro has not let me down.
Granted, this is only the second film I have ever seen with his name attached. I didn’t associate his name with films like Mimic and Hellboy, although I have since learned that he was a part of those films. To me he has brought Pan’s Labyrinth and now The Orphanage. Pan’s Labyrinth was an amazing fairy tale with the blunt edge of reality striking wildly through it. His visual effects kept you deep inside of the organic reality of his tale so that only the brutality of the film forced you to voluntarily back away from the film at times, rather than a bad CGI effect forcing you out of the story. Del Toro didn’t direct The Orphanage, but it has the earmark of one of his stories. It is to horror/suspense what Labyrinth was to fairy tale.
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, this film was originally released in Spain as El Orfanato and the American release is subtitled. But don’t think of it as a stoic art film that gets you so caught up in reading that you miss the scenes. This horror film builds the suspense like a Hitchcock movie, but whereas a Hitchcock movie might leave you bewildered, this film, as Pan’s Labyrinth did, leaves you with the perfect ending, albeit not the easiest to embrace. It has the pangs of reality combined with the added value of fantasy.
Belen Rueda plays Laura, a woman who, with her doctor husband and their son Simon, is returning to the Orphanage where she grew up. They want to fix the place up and make it a home where they can care for sick children that parents are unable to care for themselves. But her son Simon, who is already prone to imaginary friends, is finding new ones. The imaginary friends in the old orphanage know things about Laura and slowly turn Simon against her. When Simon disappears, Laura goes on an insane quest that costs her everything.
This perfectly shot film with a gripping story that unfolds in the most compelling way possible will have you on the edge of your seat until it barrels down the old stairs to its conclusion, at which point everything becomes clear and you will want to watch the movie again immediately. Maintaining all of the creepy and jumpy moments of a horror film, it is also delicately painted with emotional drama that makes the film more tangible and real. It is also not a horror film that makes a simple and underwhelming judgement of an obvious villain or some sense of karmic revenge, but rather faces the possibility of ghosts and the even more real sense that bad things happening cannot always be prevented.
See this movie. It is thrilling and fantastic. I’m not usually partial to foreign films, but after seeing The Orphanage, I will be looking forward to films that wear Guillermo del Toro’s name, be it as producer, writer or director, he has yet to let me down.