The Orphanage (El Orfanato), or: When an homage isn't an homage at all

The Orphanage (El Orfonato) (2007)

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayone

***SPOILERS***

An homage is a strange beast, and it can be hard to pinpoint in film. There are entire films hellbent on remaining homages to former films, with goofy flicks that are normally labeled as spoofs, and films like The Cabin in the Woods and 13 Assassins serving as homages with their clear-cut references to films within the same genre. And those films, despite their flaws, are beautiful for their adherence to formula and tradition, where the sly humor is less tongue-in-cheek and more gracious. But The Orphanage is a strange recreation of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. Their stories are entirely different, but as far as creepy undead children roaming the household goes, their styles, shot selection, and subject matter seem brazenly similar. So yeah, The Orphanage seems like a homage, but really: is it even an homage at all?

The Orphanage certainly feels like a pastiche collection of classic films, from Dario Argento to Roman Polanski to del Toro, who incidentally funded the film and plastered his name all over the posters and DVD cover. And for as many shots that mimic Argento’s methodically deliberate and chilling shot selection and the gruesomeness of Polanki’s The Tenant, The Orphanage feels all-too-similar to del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. And however flattered director Juan Antonio Bayona may have been by del Toro’s graceful approval, he’d be foolish in believing he’s recreated the genius of del Toro’s body of work—especially The Devil’s Backbone. In being an homage to his fellow Spanish director and a tip of the hat to countless pre-1980 exercises in supernatural horror, Bayona’s The Orphanage mistakes stylish puzzles for substance, providing for an homage that isn’t flattering in the slightest.

Because The Orphanage owns all the perplexing and confounding twists of a del Toro film (or any other famous psychological horror film you can probably think of), but none of the heart or poignancy. The only claim Sergio G. Sánchez’s screenplay can lay about The Orphanage’s connection to del Toro lies in the pure progression of Laura’s (Belén Rueda) mission to find her son Simón (Roger Príncep). The story goes through the motions, but the sheer unoriginality of this sequence of events leads to confusion over just how much time has passed since Simón went missing. There’s a search party; Laura cries herself to sleep; she and her husband attend a grieving parents meeting; a medium visits their home and uncovers the ghosts roaming about the orphanage. This rather unadventurous sequence of events attempts to integrate the underlying trauma and psychological factor of Laura’s that’s intended to enchant the material—which is Laura’s not-so-mysterious connection to the haunted orphanage—but there’s never a sense of capturing just exactly what allows the ghost orphanage children to subjugate Laura’s bereaved mindset so promptly. An old woman visits the home to ask questions of her past, but beyond the grotesque appearance of these children, there’s not a single scene or moment that actually catapults Laura into such insane territory. Without pathos, the only horror these children gain are their mere presence, which can be scary, but it’s not good horror material.

Take The Devil’s Backbone. The presence of the dead boy owns a physical and symbolic connection: a bomb that caused the boy’s drowned death lies in the middle of the courtyard of the orphanage, linking the boy’s past to these characters’ present. Throughout the film there’s an encompassing allude to war, which becomes all the more horrendous once set against the chilling image of a pale-white drowned boy whose life was destroyed by such a grotesque practice. A similar attempt is made in The Orphanage, where the filmmakers dedicate scenes to Simón asking his mother about Peter Pan and the prospect of never growing old. This discussion is meant to offset Laura’s eventual realization that she put the nail in Simón’s coffin in her search for him—but it’s resolutely one-note. As we move through Laura’s search for Simón, there’s no honest attempt to forward such an underlying theme that seemed much more prevalent in the film’s opening sequences than during its massive middle treasure hunt, where it disappears and comes back in the end for an unwelcome finale.

The treasure hunt itself is meant to mimic Simón’s similar treasure hunt, but owns none of the humane connections. Simón’s search for treasure is an evocation for childlike wonder and escaping imagination, but Laura’s search is the culmination of several freak encounters and a medium’s ghostly stroll about the orphanage, abandoning the “troubled past” angle the film perpetuated while Simón was missing and never providing a link to Simón’s treasure hunt…other than, you know, it’s another treasure hunt! The lack of connectivity makes this seemingly del-Toro-rific progression of unearthly events seem less impressive, and altogether empty of compelling drama without an honest attempt to connect these characters’ psyches. Alongside the slowly beguiled and troubled mind of Trelkovsky in The Tenant, The Orphanage comes across rather childish and gaggingly playful—much like the orphanage children who come back to haunt Laura.

In what may the worst homage in recent horror memory, the final scene becomes the culmination and representation of the film’s intentions, where it pretends to care about any of its characters by giving them a pretty pathetic sendoff. Trelkovsky's (of The Tenant) ending is sad, but fitting and proper to his downward spiral. The same can be said for Suspiria and del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which comes off as kind, but treats its characters’ tragic end with the proper human heft that accompanied the film. The only compliment that can be made to The Orphanage’s closing moments isn’t its respect of such an ending—since it’s a misplaced respect—but that it keeps in line with the rest of the film: this doesn’t make any fucking sense. The capricious nature of the film’s storyline and the dwindling psyches of its characters is topped with a closing shot of Laura sitting with her dead son and the orphanage’s former tenants. Bayona slowly backs away from the “moment” alongside the touching piano score, giving the scene such an inexplicably goofy aura that it makes it seem as though the filmmakers were playing a joke on us the entire time. For as Laura cries with her son, it becomes wholesomely clear that these deformed children shouldn’t even be there, but are there because of their deformities' shock value—every bit as useless as the old woman's face being torn off. Their unintentional utilization as tragic aberrations owns only a surface-touch to Laura’s past, lending the scene even more emptiness than comedy. The sad part is: neither was intentional. Aren’t homages supposed to be intentional?

Final thoughts:

There are some great shots in this film—despite their complete and utter lack of substance in regards to the screenplay. Perhaps his future projects will show more promise. Most notably, his least tame shot in the film becomes his best, as when Laura taps on the wall (another moment that mimics an earlier one, but owns no humanistic connection) and the camera reverts back and forth, slowly revealing more laughably deformed children. Belén Rueda proves she could be a great horror actress, lending the faux-dramatic moments an enticing bit of tragedy. But really: this is an adequately performed piece of trash. It may seem like a legit horror film that recreates Suspiria or The Devil’s Backbone, but upon contemplation, there’s nothing but a disciplined shot selection to connect these films. The Orphanage may fool viewers with its stamp of approval and large budget, but even money can’t fix a lack of humane depth, which The Orphanage owns little to none of.