There are a couple of interesting articles available today that examine the subtle approach to horror used in THE ORPHANAGE:
“ORPHANAGE is more than just a horror film” consists mostly of an interview with director Juan Antonio Bayona, who insists that he did not make just a horror film:
“A ghost story doesn’t have to be a horror story,” said Bayona. “That’s the lesson I learned as a kid, watching Spanish movies about the Franco regime. They deal with ghosts, with loss, ghosts as something psychological, not related to visual effects. Everything in this script happens in the mind of Laura.”
“Subtly Terrifying, Just Like Real Life” is more in-depth, with quotes from Bayona, actress Belen Reuda, executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, and critic Mikita Brottman. (Full Disclosure: a favorable quote from me was included in the promotional materials for Brottman’s book Offensive Films.) The article attempts to set THE ORPHANGE in context, as a new entry in the classic tradition that includes THE INNOCENTS (1961), as opposed to the more contemporary “torture porn” films.
“The horror genre has many incarnations,” Mr. Del Toro, whose filmography as a director of horror includes “Cronos,” “Mimic” and “Hellboy,” said in a telephone interview. “So many people tend to lump them all together, but that’s like lumping a Farrelly brothers comedy with one by Peter Sellers or Woody Allen. There are many incarnations, some classic, some transgressive. They may be shocking or emotional or both. They all have a right to exist. I’m in favor of anything that evokes thought or emotion.”
He can’t, however, see himself producing what is commonly called torture porn “because I think it’s dehumanizing, and nothing works if there’s no human empathy. All the suspense is completely empty if the characters are not human.”
Mikita Brottman, author of “Offensive Films” (Greenwood Press) and a professor of language and literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, said: “Films like ‘Hostel’ are more like the grand guignol of late-19th-century French street theater, in that subtlety, psychology, character and sustained narrative are all sacrificed on the altar of shock effect and images of bodily disintegration.
“‘Hostel stands in relation to ‘Orphanage’ as hard-core porn does to Hollywood romance — distilled, undiluted collections of those moments that their traditional counterparts can’t reveal.”
And speaking of Guillermo Del Toro, a recent poll has voted his 2006 fantasy-war-horror film PAN’S LABYRINTH as the most popular foreign language film in the U.K.