The Orphanage - Honey Azh

Life itself is threatened usually because the principle character is unsuspecting or unknowing. This is what thrillers generally focus on and this is in particular in ‘The Orphanage’. The Orphanage is a Mexican-Spanish thriller film made in 2007. The film stars Belen Rueda as Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she stayed for a period of time as a child. She purchases a house, with plans to turn it into a home for disabled orphan children. Everything seems to be going well for Laura, she has her husband Carlos played by Cayo and their son Simon played by Princep. However, the parents soon realize their son has an imaginary friend and horror beings to unfold. The busy Laura does not give much attention to her son; then she sees a mysterious masked boy and Simón vanishes. Laura feels the presence of other persons in the house and months later, the desperate Laura invites a team of parapsychologists to try to unravel the mystery.

The main characters in this film conform to the thriller genre. There is an antagonist and a protagonist. The antagonist in the film is Tomas and the protagonist in the film is Laura. This is because Laura is the unfortunate women whose son gets attracted by the antagonist Tomas. Tomas is a little boy ghost who has died and attempts to take Simon away from his family too. These two main characters are typical of the thriller genre as one is ‘evil’ while the other is the ‘good’ who is put in a situation out of her depth. This will appeal to the thriller target audience as it has a hint were they can relate to Laura and admire her determination to do anything to find her son.

The main setting of this film is in an old orphanage home. The home is very old and has perhaps mysterious secrets within. This is because of the fact that the film highlights that children ghost are all over the house throughout the film. This therefore conveys that this is a thriller film, with mysteries laid out and puzzles to solve. This is in particularly shown when Laura searches the house to find her son, and the is playing with the spirits and ghosts of the children in order to try to find her son. From this we take into account that this is clearly a psychological thriller; as this orphanage in particular is proved to have many mysterious and hidden secrets with problems to solve.

The sound used in The Orphanage is very typical of a thriller as it is mysterious and well throughout. When something important happens the background music sound goes up and increasingly builds with the tension and suspense. This adds to the thriller genre as the sound represents the mood of the film, and therefore highlights the thriller genre.

The camera work used throughout ‘The orphanage’ is significant in highlighting that this is a thriller film to the audience. For example a key part which highlighted the fact that this is a thriller is when Laura was playing a game with the ghost children. This game involved Laura constantly turning around to check if the children were there, the camera work for this perhaps shows most that this film is a thriller this is because we almost known that she is going to turn around and at some stage the children will be there. This is built up from the audience knowing and waiting for Laura to turn around. This is a significant feature, as if this was a horror then we the audience would some what have been scared and shocked, which is unlike what happened as the audience were expecting this. This shows that the camera work used throughout also portrays the fact that ‘The Orphanage’ is a thriller film as there is the use of reaction shots and panning shots also in particular when she is playing with the children. However close up shots are not used as much as in typical horror films. Also often as an audience we are shown and told a lot of what is going to happen, before the event takes place.

‘The Orphanage’ is furthermore a detective story with a single minded pursuit of a goal, which is in Laura’s case as she is determined to find her son. The tension of the film is high and the audience are constantly captivated by the film, however very little that is frightening actually happens, although the mood connotes otherwise.

Overall I would most certainly classify this film as a thriller film as it follows many codes and conventions of typical thrillers. For instance the fact that this is some kind of mystery which the character in this film and the audience attempt to solve, because it is a film with a sort of mystery it therefore involves the audience from the start to interact with the film and keeps the audience interested throughout. ‘The Orphanage’ is arguably a psychological thriller which also offers huge amounts of horror, this alters with the fact it is just a thriller and therefore perhaps offers other a horror aspect as well.