The Orphanage (2007)

The obvious follow up to Orphan is The Orphanage. they are in no way connected though unfortunately.

We see kids playing something like red light green light perhaps. This is clearly an orphanage, and the kids appear to have disabilities. The lady gets a call and one of the girls is gonna get a new home. Sweet. Laura is getting adopted. I also have a mug of wine. Why a mug? Because I like mugs with booze in them.

Now Laura and Carlos have a kid, Simon. They now live in the orphanage house, Simon wants to sleep with mommy. The next day and there are some renovations and Carlos plays piano with Laura. Simon has invisible friends, cause he’s lonely. During the day, Laura and Simon go to the beach. He ends up in a cave, he’s a troglodyte. If you didn’t get that joke, try harder. Laura finds him talking to himself, and he says it’s not Watson or Pepe, it’s a new boy. Well duhhhh.

Beninga is an old lady who is a social worker there for Simon. Laura wants 5 to 6 kids there for an orphanage. Beninga is there to check in I guess. Simon has a disease, and doesn’t know about it, nor does he know that he is adopted, and his dad’s a doctor. Shitttt, Simon has HIV. Oh, and Laura was rude as a mother fucker Beninga. What a name.

Again at night, they hear noises. Laura checks it out. A door is opening and closing in like a shed or storage G unit. Beninga is in there, with a shovel, and they just played cutesy music. Laura wakes Carlos. That was silly.

She sleeps with Simon and he asks if he can wake up. Haha. Laura opens the front door and finds a trail of seas shells. This seems legit. Then a bathroom door inside closes. I like all of this. Simon is reading Peter Pan. Laura is 37, and Simon asks how old she will be when she dies. Simon now has 6 friends who can’t grow old. She finds a picture Simon drew of his 6 friends, and they are holding items that you love and would want back. The game is to follow the clues, and if you find it, they grant you a wish. Seems legit. Simon has old coins, or so he says, from an old man. He shows Laura the special coins, but they are teeth, which is the first clue as these assholes have his coins. Lady, were you paying attention? So now they hunt. She finds sand in a bottle. So now to the next clue. They find a thimble, then some hairpin maybe, they end up in the church room and find one of those Russian stacking dolls. Inside is a key, and that leads to his portfolio. Tomas, his friend told him that she wasn’t his mom and that he’s gonna die. Goooo on.

The parents sit Simon down to talk about things, answer his questions. They think that he came up with everything. Silly Spaniards. Simon is worried about his meds.

The next day, the new kids show up. Cool. Laura gets Simon so they can welcome the newbies. Well Simon wants to show mom Tomas’ house, and she blows him off, but he is standing firm, so they yell. He ends up making her drop the cake or whatever it was, and so she slaps him and then regrets it. She tells him if he doesn’t want to go downstairs, nobody is forcing him. I am digging this party, lots of people have masks. These are all special needs kids. That’s cool. There’s a lot of kids, and one kid is all alone wearing a sweet scary mask. Laura goes looking for Simon. She sees the cool kid down the hall from her when she turns around, and the kid walks towards her. This is creepy cool. She thinks that it’s Simon, She goes to take off the mask. The kid shoves her, slams her hand in the door, and then she falls backward, into the tubs, cracks her skull, and he locks her in and runs away with the key. I like everything that happened in this paragraph. Oh man, her one nail is broke.

Carlos breaks her out and she goes looking for Simon again. You guys are in way over your head with 2 adults and all of these kids. I hope the cool kid is Tomas. She is outside taking off everybody’s mask, and she is in full panic, scaring the other parents. She runs to the cave, but on her way, she falls, hurts her leg. She sees him in the cave, he doesn’t and the tide is rising. The cops investigate the cave, she goes to the hospital. So I ask, how are 2 of them handling all of these kids if one gets hurt, then what? We meet Pilar, a psychologist who tells her that she was imaging shit. Pilar said that it’s possible that he was kidnapped by relatives, and no social worker came there. Dun dun dun. SO they are blaming Beninga.

At home, Carlos gives her some necklace of his grandma’s for good luck. I think Laura is in a wheelchair. Yup, she is, and has a big ole cast on her left leg. She hears thumping upstairs. She calls out for Carlos. The door that she was near just rattled violently. They go in the room and find a black doll, well African American doll, well they are in Spain, so African Spaniard?

6 months later, Simon is still missing. She in some group meeting with Carlos. She mentions his imaginary friends, and how she feels that they are in the house. Some lady says that she saw her daughter in her house a year after her death. She believes it was her daughter’s way of saying that she was loved. This is a group for people who have lost their children, and they all have similar tales. She claims to not be crazy. This is a horror movie. Of course, you are crazy.

They are in a pretty little snow-covered village. Laura sees Beninga on the street. She says her name and Beninga stops and immediately is run over. She had a cart, and in the cart was a doll that resembles the kid who fucked her up. Carlos is trying to give Beninga CPR, but she’s dead. Laura sees the weird necklace on her, and she looks at it, and Beninga grabs her quickly, exposing her fucked-up face. Awesome.

Laura is looking at old photos of the orphanage with Pilar and sees young Beninga in the picture. So it wasn’t Laura that used to be in the Orphanage. Who feels dumb now? So we get old video reel footage because somebody had a video camera apparently. Beninga had a son, Tomas, who was deformed. He was kept away from the other kids. They found Tomas’ body on the beach right before Laura adopted Simon. So the kids played a trick on Tomas, lured him in the caves, then took his mask off to see if he would or could go out without it on. But he never came out, he drowned. Laura says that he was in the house, but nobody at the party recalls seeing ole sack boy. She watched more video, and it showed him without the mask. Poor dude.

It’s night time, so needless to say, shit has to happen. She can’t sleep. I think she is talking to who she thinks is Carlos, but I doubt it’s him. She sees shadows under the door crack, the light goes off, it’s Carlos. She is convinced somebody was in bed with her.

Some tubby dude is giving a talk or lecture about people’s subconscious and seeing dead. Blah blah blah. He talks to her after, and she tells him of the weird things. He says that she can’t find an exorcist in the yellow pages. He has a friend who is a medium that could help.

This lady is fun. So we have Enrique, who is her helper, Professor Leo who is the heavy dude, and I don’t know her name yet. She wants clothes from the past and says that they are not alone. Pilar would like to join in. So they have cameras set up. She has the doll so she can go in a trance. Her name is Aurora. It’s trance time suckas. Time to record.

She wakes up feeling very cold and says the window is open. Leo asks if there’s anybody with her, so she goes looking. She did hear something, but fears that she lost them. Now she found something, and they are picking up audio, of children. She is trying to open a door, but it’s looked. A kid is crying that they are sick and they want her to open it, they need help. She enters and is terrified asking “What have they done?”. She sees 5 kids who are all very sick and dying from poison. Somebody is going to kill them. She asks if Simon is in there. The cameras are getting fucked, they are losing the feed. That was awesome. Leo counts down and she ends up back in her original chair.

Aurora is telling Laura what she saw. Carlos says that she saw kids, so, therefore, she saw ghosts, and Leo is like, dude, we all saw shit. Aurora says that those close to death are more likely to be able to see and talk with the dead. On a side note, I have always believed that to be true because I’d like to believe in that sort of thing, but I don’t believe in ghost hunter stuff. Personal opinion. Simon could see because of his HIV. Carlos gets pissed and wants them to leave, Pilar agrees with him, saying it’s a farce. Good call. Laura is like, listen here, these people aren’t asking for any money, the police have yet to find one clue on Simon’s disappearance, and you fuckers want me to just sit and wait? She called Pilar a distraction. So Pilar bounces. Aurora says that Laura’s pain will give her strength, and it’s not about seeing is believing, but the opposite.

Carlos is taking down all of his work in looking for Simon. Carlos wants to leave, and Laura is like, nope. He thinks the medium was fucking with them. She says he can leave if he wants, but she wants to be with Simon. Dedication, just like FOX News. Ha.

Laura asks where he is, she says that she’s not afraid, so a window slams shut, and it leads to a bench with some names on boards and some dolls. So she gets one doll and places it in the box. She sees a picture, and it’s of her and Simon. She realizes that they are playing a game. I wish Tobin Bell was involved.

She goes to the photo album, finds a flower, I thought it was a feather. In the flowers, she finds a square of a quilt. In the quilt, she finds a wrapper that Simon had in his little chest earlier. This leads to something else, like a dresser knob. So she is in the storage and finds a locket type thing with a picture Beninga. Every time I type that, I feel like Sheldon in Big Bang Theory saying Bazinga. Anyway, she starts kicking through this ting door and she is clearing shit out. I admire her a bit. She finds the lower half of a jaw, would that also be considered the mandible? Hmmm. One of the bags had it in there. She finds bones of other dead kids instead. And then we see the police as there. She sees Carlos talking to Pilar.

She says that there are five of them,: Martin, Rita, Alicia, Guillermo, and Victor. She things Beninga killed them for their game with Tomas. Carlos has packed his shit up and he wants to leave, she asks for 2 more days. So he is going, and she is staying, he doesn’t look happy about this. He drives away.

Laura does laundry. She is moving things and recreating the orphanage. She even raised the old scarecrow. The beds are assembled and made. She puts on something like Beninga. Time to pick berries, pop some pills. She rings the dinner bell, and she sits at the table with the dolls at the respective seats with the same meal as she saw in the film. She is wondering what else she has to do and is super frustrated. She says that she will keep playing if they will show her Simon. So now she plays the game that they played at the beginning. She knows 3 times on the wall, then looks behind her. This is gonna be jump scare. The kids all show up and they touch her on the shoulder and scamper away. She chases one and promises to not hurt her, just wants to know where Simon is.

She follows the kid in, and is looking, there is no kid, and then the door closes on her. She is in a big closet I think. Ahhh,, she rips of some wallpaper and a place for her to insert her knob and this opens a door to a cellar. At this point, fuck that man. We see some movement. Cellars are creepy. There is a bunch of art and drawings, some with the kid’s names on them. Oh, a pic of Beninga with Tomas. And she finds Simon. He asks her why she is crying. She hears noises upstairs, and Simon wants her to stay and play with them. She wants him to only focus on her and him, and close his eyes. She closes her eyes and when they open, the lights are off. The blanket she was holding with him in it is now empty. She sees Tomas on the ground though. She is having flashbacks from earlier in the film. She removes the mask, and it’s Simon. She is screaming “Nooooo” over and over. She brings his skeleton back up from the basement.

She brings him to the room where she assembled the beds, and she tells him it isn’t fair because she did find him after all. She is popping pills and holding the skeleton. She takes off the necklace that Carlos gave her. Then we see outside that the merry go round was moving. I feel that this scene was in the trailer. She says that she wants Simon back, and then through the window behind her, she sees the lighthouse is working. She sees a little girl (Herself) out there running toward it. Now Simon is alive and his wish is that Laura stays and takes after the kids. Tomas just entered the room and him and another girl walks up to Laura. The kids are all excited and gather around Laura. Then a reference to Peter Pan and the lost children.

It’s day time now, and we see nice memorial tombstone in honor of Laura, Simon, and the rest. Carlos brings flowers and goes inside. He sees the necklace. The doors swing open and he smiles.

End film

This was good. Not so much scary, but good nonetheless. It is well shot and well-acted. My biggest thing to compare it to is The Others. For me, The Others is better, but that doesn’t make this bad. This has a nicer story, a gentler touch, not as scary. Lots of lead-ups for scare with no payoff. Still, I liked it a lot.

Final rating: 7.0

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