Wendy's Return to Never Isle - "The Orphanage"

Mother and child, desolate castle, invisible playmate, gloomy atmosphere, this is the beginning of the mother-son/mother-daughter supernatural movie that has gone into the cliché, which can be found in "Silent Hill", "The Others", "The Omen" and other series found this sign, as was the 2007 Spanish Oscar-nominated film "Orphanage". Just in the first half hour, when I thought it would also go into a fixed routine, the film turned wonderfully, and for the remaining hour, I had to be forced to follow the dark scenes and tug at my heart until the end. Appearing in front of him, he took a deep breath.

As a newcomer to the production of Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy", "Pan's Labyrinth"), the director and screenwriter of the film are basically qualified. Although I think the entry point of this theme is a bit flooded and mediocre, but for the first time directing Long-form, so that the film can be in the normal subject and visual performance, revealing the evil and sad emotions that overwhelm the supernatural film itself, in the current thriller market that relies on monsters, blood spray, and copies of Japanese horror films, It is rare to be able to listen to the voice from another world from the heart and feel the unresolved sadness after the end. Of course, this is inseparable from the wonderful performance of Belén Rueda ("Eternal Sleep"), the movie is almost her one-man show, Lola is not the weak and screaming heroine, nor is it brave to take up arms and confront ghosts The female warrior, she is just a mother who loves her adopted child, a woman who misses her childhood friend in the orphanage, a woman who has closed her sad memories and dare not face the truth, a woman who would rather exchange the reality of death in exchange for it. Return to Wendy, who is forever with her Peter Pans on Never Island.

The last moment of the movie is suddenly very similar to "Pan's Labyrinth". In the world where the lighthouse is shining, Lola lives happily with the dead children. The opposite reality is that her husband is facing a cold building. Tomb, only the smile on his face when he finally picked up the pendant symbolizing the finding of Simao revealed a hint of warmth. Even without the thought-provoking social background and the narrative style full of metaphors like "Pan's Labyrinth", "The Orphanage" also brings us a strong helpless contrast at this last moment, reality and fantasy, facing and escaping, maybe The difference is just a choice, whether to grow up in the vast reality and die of old Wendy, or to be a Peter Pan who can never grow up but live forever in the island of never.

Like a clockwork that is doomed to break at the last moment, the film has the tension of gradually climbing to a climax at the end. For the island-like seaside orphanage, the most special thing is that it is not the sin and blood that happened in it that makes it ghostly, but the warmth and happiness that the children once had. The real reason to escape to the world of ghosts.

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