Horror unplugged
One gets a taste of European cinema in films like The Orphanage,
which has a great plot and stunning climax
Ervell E. Menezes

This time we shall start with the Spanish horror film The Orphanage, directed by J.A. Bayona. And it is his debut as director, which makes it all the more creditable.

It has all ingredients of eerie horror, a large mansion with a plethora of rooms, even a cellar, which was earlier an orphanage and it is former inmate Laura (Belen Reuda), who after decades decides to come back and turn it into a home for disabled children.

So she sets out to the place accompanied by her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their seven-year-old adopted son Simon (Roger Princep). But it doesn’t take time for things to happen with her son’s imagination running wild after meeting little Tomas (Oscar Tomas).

Then she is visited by social worker Benigna Escobeda (Montserrat Carulla), who gives Laura bad news that Simon is HIV positive. Simon soon comes to know that he has been adopted and this worries him. In the meanwhile, weird things keep happening. Are there spirits at work?

Psychiatrist Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin) is called in and there also a police psychologist Pilar (Mabel Rivers) and suspicion is sprinkled copiously on these cameos, including the social worker who sets the ball rolling.

If the mansion raises visions of the house in Psycho, the story is reminiscent of an early 1960s horror film The Innocents with Deborah Kerr in the lead role in which her young charges are possessed by demons. Like in The Innocents too, the horror is used judiciously. In such films less is more and director Bayona’s handling is just impeccable. His closeness to Spanish director Guillermo del Torro, who partially financed the film, may have also helped. Bayona needed a bigger budget to enhance the production values in order to match Spanish cinema of the 1970s. Belen Reuda gets under the skin of the character and her reactions are palpable, enhanced by apt situations where most of the action takes place at night and cinematographer Oscar Farera uses the light succinctly. Roger Princep is adequate and Geraldine Chaplin turns in a good cameo and so does Montserrat Carulla but the others are just about nominal. The spirits angle, too, is cleverly dealt with, making the story quite believable. The climax is stunning and leaves the viewer cathartic. It is not often that we are exposed to European cinema and that’s another plus point.

Carrie is about Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz), a shy young girl who is the butt of ragging in her class. She also has a very religious mother Margaret (Juliana Moore), overprotective and suspicious. But she also has telekinetic powers, though these come to the fore in the latter half of the film.

Carrie is so naïve that when she has her first period in school she thinks she is bleeding and hence is the subject of ridicule by her colleagues, especially the bully Chris Harlenson (Portia Doubleday). But it is the PT teacher Miss Desjarden (Judy Greer), who tries to protect her.

To compensate for the ragging, her good friend Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take her out to the prom but her mother refuses to send her.

It is then that Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to lock her in the room to make it to the prom. Though she and her partner are crowned the leading couple, Carrie is targeted by her rivals. What follows, however, is a surfeit of telekinetic powers with FX team working overtime.

Just the opposite of The Orphanage it is overkill and it is just "fireworks" with little involvement of the audience. The screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Sacosa could have exercised more restraint.

Director Kimberly Pierce’s handling of the subject is poor and there is scarcely any cumulative build-up. It is hard to believe that she directed that masterpiece Boys Don’t Cry about a decade ago where a very thin line divides the two sexes/ Shades of Pedro Almadover’s All About My Mother. Despite the lack of credibility Chloe Grace Moretz turns in a creditable performance under the circumstances and good cameos by Judy Greer and Julianne Moore round of the cast in this apology of a horror movie.

And since we are on the subject of horror, let’s briefly touch on two of the biggest names in the 1970s I think, The Exorcist and The Omen, which took horror to a whole new level. FX was there in good measure but also stories which had the viewer riveted right through. Linda Blair very nearly became a household name and that scene where her head turns all around is unforgettable as is her performance. The levitation scene is another and it is sustained horror, rarely seen of the screen before. I’d put it ahead of The Omen.

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