The Orphanage is, to put it simply, an outstanding film. I hadn’t seen it before and I did not know what to expect, and was left shocked by how much I loved the final product. I also found the theme of grief in the film to be incredibly well handled. It also related heavily to the Horror and Grief article we read earlier in the week written by Millar and Lee.
Funnily enough, The Orphanage is explicitly mentioned in the article as being one of the most significant horror films in recent memory that dealt with grief, and I believe this was done incredibly well with the “antagonists.” While The Orphanage does have a traditional antagonist in the form of Tomas, he is not really evil. He was simply a little boy who wanted to play. His mother did evil things yet her reasoning was all because of grief. She was driven mad by it. Millar and Lee state that grief is interesting in horror films because the antagonists, or monsters, can capture the shocking feeling of losing a loved one and having one’s life turned upside down. The Orphanage does this and on top of it quite literally makes the antagonist of the film grief itself. Grief is what was the main opposing force against our protagonist. She could have survived and lived a fulfilling life with her husband if she was able to overcome it. Benigna wouldn’t have killed the other children if she wasn’t driven mad by grief. The ghosts in this film are all reflections of those we have lost and the importance of moving on and laying the dead to rest.
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