Orfanato, El (2007)

Score: 8.0/10

Not yet rated

Summary: Beautifully Tragic

While Orfanato is reminiscent of other films, The Dark for example,
Orfanato ends on a note reminiscent of Japan's original Dark Water.
Where a mother must make the ultimate sacrifice to care for the lost
children, who are not just lost to this life, but this world. And while
Dark Water is an exceptional film in this regard, it is a daughter
ultimately who is left behind and not a husband. But either way, the
heart wrenching remains, and magnificently does it echo long after the
curtain falls.

Orfanato is a little slow, but it is a spectacular film for those
willing to immerse themselves in the story as it unfolds.

At one point we might imagine that the boy had hidden away in the
secret room in the closet, only to get locked in by the mother's own
hand when returning the metal supports which propped against the secret
door, the ghostly knockings being the son trying to get it, ultimately
to die there in what became his tomb. At the moment the mother finds
the hidden passage, and the body of Simon and screams out, it seems in
a flashback it occurs to her what happened to her son who had been
missing for so long.

And yet so many other strange happenings suggest something dark and
treacherous is going on as well but are they really or is it all
perception? We have the medium who comes to the house, we see the
children in the end, and so we are left with 2 possible outcomes to the
story.

One in which the son gets accidentally locked under the stairs and
dies, only to be found much later by mom who realizing what she did,
takes pills to commit suicide and throws herself into the ocean.

Or two, she slips into the other world to care for the children beyond
this life.

Whichever way you choose to look at it, this movie was fantastic.
Comepelling, beautiful, haunting, not all that scary mind you, but
enticing enough to keep you wondering, and a very nicely developed
story.

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