Tuesday, March 18, 2008
THE ORPHANAGE
Dawn wanted to get a taste of the food badly... Look at her.. Ahhhhh!
There's another outlet in The Central at Clarke Quay, but didnt take any photos then.. haha..
I wonder whether the food is nice~
The movie...
When we arrived at the cinema (yet again) the table that the person in charge was supposed to be seated was occupied by 2 guys. One was munching on popcorn while the other used the table to put his nachos. So we went to take a walk...
The person in charge arrived just before the movie, got caught in the traffic jam or sth..
The starting part of the movie, where the credits started rolling (directed by____, screenplay by____) this kind of details which few people care, i felt that the background music that came with the starting credits was a lil too eerie for a movie on children. Cos only children can stay in orphanages right?
Until the chinese tranlation of the movie title came out '灵异孤儿院'
Ahhh.. that gave me an idea of what was to come.
Oh and that movie's filmed entirely in Spanish, so i was relying on Eng subtitles throughout.
Eerie.. Creepiness..
The story's evolves around a house which was a former orphanage, the couple who just moved in intended to set up an orphanage or child care centre there. The mother grew up in that orphanage in the past, so she wanted to shower love & care for more children. They've an adopted son Simon who can see supernatural things. He talks to 'imaginary friends' & invited a 'boy' whom he saw in a dark cave home to play, by dropping shells along the way. The next day, his Mum found a pile of shells at the door, then the scene zooms in on a bathroom door that closes by itself.
The 'boy' he invited turned out to be the most vicious ghost of the lot, out to take revenge on the other kids as he was drowned in the cave when the other kids played a prank on him.
The usual stomping & creaking of the wooden flooring sound effects in horror & suspense shows are overused~
So it has become kinda 'chey! expected la!' than 'eeeks! scary!'
Her adopted son told the mother that the 'children' are playing a game, hiding of some precious things that are important to him. The mother, thinking it's just a game Simon invented, played together with him. Everyone watching the movie will know it isn't the case. One clue will lead to another, so they went around the house searching for clues. It turned out that the most important thing that was hidden was Simon's medical report which stated he was HIV positive. His mom snatched it away from him before he could read it.
As if that didn't sound a bell in his parents. Hey! Something's wrong with the house!!!!!!!!!! They aren't the only ones in there!
Until the day when Simon disappeared, his mom was busy with the meet-the-parents event to gather more children to stay with them, to listen to Simon when he wanted to show her Tomas' room. Tomas is the boy whom he brought home from the cave. Tomas locked the mother into the bathroom to prevent her from searching for Simon. Yeah should be that bathroom which he first entered. Then that night, she found a doll on Simon's bed. First clue to the game.
But she ignored it.
Till months later, the police still had no news of Simon. She engaged a medium who carried out some test in the house. Something like time travelling, there, she saw several children who were poisoned & screaming 'help me!' But the father was sceptical & decided to move out of the house, closing this chapter of his life. As expected, the mother refused & asked him to give her 3 days (if not the movie would've just ended there... no kick la)
She embarked on a hunt for Simon who she believed is still in the house. She pleaded for clues. And a glass window came crashing down. I gasped.. It's just so sudden!!
She pulled open a trunk beneath the shattered window & she found a row of dolls lying inside..
She immediately ran to find the doll she found on Simon's bed (first clue) and placed it inside, then she found another item inside the trunk & carried on the hunt for more clues. Till she came to the final clue. A door knob.. She had no idea which door it leads to.
The scenes paint a picture of a mother driven into desperation and embarks on a path of obsessive 'self-destructive' behaviour.
Here's the crazy stuff she did:
-Dug up bags of the remains of children staying in the former orphanage from a long narrow tunnel in the toolshed unwittingly when she embarked on a search for the highly elusive door with missing doorknob.
-She recreated the old orphanage (bedrooms, dining table, even down to the food... woah! da4 gong1 chen1!) in a bid to appease the spirits of those children killed & dressed up herself as the caregiven in the orphanage. i thought she was going to be killed or encounter some misfortune cos the caregiver was the one who poisoned those children.
But nothing happened then..
Until she started playing an old game which the children in the orphanage loved to play. Something like hide-and-seek, 1 child faced the wall/tree and say 'knock-knock-knock' then the other children will gather behind, until 1 child tap the child who was knocking on the shoulder, the hide-&-seek game will start.
The mother tried to coerce the children out by knocking on a wooden cabinet in a dark room. Initially there wasn't any response in the room, undeterred, she continued. Here comes the eerie part, 1 by 1 the children popped out behind her each time she knocked & turned to check. Then there's a close-up on her when she wanted to knock one more time.... a hand tapped her shoulder. *gasps*
The atmosphere created was really good & i guess that would be the most eerily frightening & memorable scene of the whole movie.
So the game starts.. She found a girl first & she was led into the storeroom under a staircase by her. As she dug through the filthy storeroom, a child slammed the door to the storeroom shut. That was a lil sudden & yeah yet another creepy scene. Inside the storeroom, she dug her nails into the wallpaper & found a door. Oohs. She stuck the doorknob into that door & soon found herself in a well hidden basement which was once Tomas' bedroom. (Tomas was a facially deformed boy who'd spent most of his years hidden from the public's view by his mother before being drowned when the children played a prank on him in the cave by removing his mask & daring him to step out of the cave before the seawater comes in)
She found her son Simon lying in Tomas' bed but he was already dead (he couldnt go without medication given his condition)
Then some amazing thing happened...
She prayed long & hard for her son to be fine.
When she looked up, the lighthouse's beacon of light shone on her face. (Left many in the audience like me wondering how come that defunct lighthouse is working again??)
The truth is, she travelled back into the past..
And the children were all sitting in their beds.. No longer giving people creeps by sneaking around.
So she stayed there to take care of all those children in the orphanage & Simon.
The end.. 不能说的秘密style of ending heheheh..
yunn. at 2:01 PM