Had I paid closer attention to the movie description on Amazon, I wouldn’t have bought this movie. The Orphanage was filmed in Spain, and the actors speak Spanish. I didn’t realize this until I started watching the movie, but decided that if I could sit through Ju-on and its subtitles, I could sit through this.
The Orphanage begins with young Laura (Belén Rueda) playing a game with her friends. The scene ends when the orphanage headmaster goes outside to tell Laura that she has been adopted. Years later, she and her husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), return to the old orphanage to live. They plan to reopen it as a home for special needs children.
Their seven year-old son, Simón (Roger Príncep), has a lot of imaginary playmates. He is also HIV-positive and doesn’t know that he is adopted until an old woman visits the house, using the guise of a social worker. In the meantime, Laura has been hearing strange noises and dealing with her son’s growing insistence that his imaginary playmates are real.
Tension builds between mother and son until it explodes on the day of their open house. Simon vanishes without a trace. Six months later, he is still missing. The police have not been able to help the distraught couple. Finally, Laura decides to contact a medium to help her find her son.
This is where the movie gets really good. A classic battle of skeptic versus believer unfolds between Carlos (who refuses to believe) and Laura (who is looking for any answer at this point). In the end, she stays on in the house to unravel the mystery of her past because she feels that the past is the key to finding her son.
I won’t say any more about the plot. But I will say that this is the most original ghost story I’ve yet to watch. Director, Guillermo Del Toro did an excellent job putting this movie together. While The Orphanage had plenty of dark atmosphere and special effects, he put his focus more on the story that makes you think and feel. Highly recommended.
Ignoring the female narrator, who sounds more like that medium on Poltergeist (with a cold), this is a great documentary about a haunted house in Villisca Iowa. The axe-murder of Josiah Moore and his entire family in 1912 is considered one of the worst mass murders in US history. Since then, the house has had a series of renters and owners. Darwin Linn is the current owner, who hired paranormal investigator Dave Christensen of Paranormal Investigations, Inc. to check out the cold spots and creepy goings-on in that old house.
I listened to a former resident describe how she felt chilled when she saw a picture of the victims with an unknown drifter, and how the sight of his face sent a chill through her. Then I listened to the investigators describe an icy draft that makes visitors feel uneasy. Finally, I listened to Villisca Axe Murder House - EVPs. Put all this together, and it makes me wonder if this unknown stranger was the killer, as the former resident suggested. The killer was never caught, but he may still be lurking in that house, waiting for his victims to fall asleep.
For further reading and ghost tour information, visit Roadside America.
When looking to buy a house, make sure to question the current owners if they want to sell the house with everything in it. Because chances are, there is a very good and unpleasant reason they want to get rid of everything. Gaetano Bastianelli thought he was getting a deal of the century when he bought a modern home in the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 2005. Little did he know that he and his family would spend the next three years enduring horrific paranormal events, such as finding luminous green mold all over the walls every morning.
Why the Bastianellis didn’t move out sooner than they did makes me suspicious of his claims. At any rate, Bastianelli may very well win this case because of a 1490 Italian law which requires residents to inform prospective buyers of anything that is wrong with the house. Also, research confirms that an exorcism of a girl took place in the house in 1977.
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, then you’ll know that I love a good ghost story. I found this movie while wandering through Best Buy on Saturday and was intrigued enough with the synopsis to buy it. The first half of The Abandoned crawled to the point that I stopped playing the movie about halfway through.
One of the problems was my mild dislike for the character, Marie Jones (played by Anastasia Hille), who flies to Russia to search for her birth parents. I didn’t understand her bitterness and mistrust toward people until I watched the rest of the movie tonight. Then, I only got a glimmer of her backstory.
She discovers that both of her parents are deceased and that she has inherited their house in a remote part of the wilderness. For the first half of the movie, expect to watch her stumbling around one of the creepiest houses ever shown on film. Director Nacho Cerda did a great job with this, as well as the Russian wilderness backdrop.
The action got somewhat better when her alleged twin brother, Nicolae, appeared on the scene and helps her fight off the dopplegangers that keep following them around. What their purpose was, I didn’t find out until the very end. Why the murders took place wasn’t revealed, only that it did take place and the ghost of their father wanted them back.
This movie was heavy on creepy effects and weak on plot. While it was refreshing to see a 40-something protagonist, I didn’t like the character, although I felt sorry for her when she learned the truth about her family. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend buying the movie. Rent it instead, if only to see the house.
