Prom Night, The Orphange: Movie Review (2008)

Currently, audiences can choose between two horror movies new to the market. One was Spain’s official entry for this year’s Academy Awards. The other is Sony’s unofficial entry for next year’s Razzie Awards, where it almost certainly will be nominated for the revered Golden Raspberry.

Let’s make quick work of the latter movie, Nelson McCormick’s “Prom Night,” which is now bloodying its crown in theaters, and then get on with the horror movie you should see, Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Orphanage,” otherwise known as “El Orfanato,” which is just out on DVD and Blu-ray disc.

“Prom Night” is a remake of the R-rated, 1980 horror movie of the same name, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis when she was busy making a career out of avoiding butcher knives by any number of madmen. McCormick’s version comes with a more violence-friendly PG-13 rating, which would have been just fine had the movie amped up the tension with good writing and a solid undercurrent of suspense.

It doesn’t. Instead, we get a silly movie in which a hive of young adults are slaughtered and gutted on what should be one of the happiest night of their lives. Who’s wielding the knife? That would be Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech), a deranged former high school teacher who once caused cute Donna (Brittany Snow) a groundswell of grief when he murdered her family. Bummer!

Now, on the very night Donna has pulled herself together to shine on prom night, Fenton is on the loose from a maximum security prison and determined to knock her off, as well as all of her friends. So, yes, Fenton is something of a joy kill. And like this rote movie of no surprises--the whole thing is an assembly line of slasher movie cliches--he’s a dull one at that.

There is nothing dull about Bayona’s “The Orphanage,” which didn’t open in the many markets because it features the sort of bump-in-the-night frights some some movie houses fear--subtitles and quality.

Set in a large manor house that once was an orphanage for a host of poisoned tots, this expertly conceived ghost story unfolds with unusual reservoirs of grace and menace. Unlike “Prom Night,” there isn’t a cheap jolt in the movie. Instead, Bayona offers a slow build up of dread through the powerful vehicle of paranormal suggestion. For almost the entire movie, we never really know what’s going on inside the orphanage in question (or what occurred there years ago to make it haunted now), and that’s where the film’s suspense is allowed to mount--in the realm of the unknown.

The film stars Belen Rueda as Laura, who years ago lived in the orphanage before she was adopted. Now, she has returned with her husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), and their ailing son, Simon (Roger Princep), to run the place.

Trouble is, before they can do so, Simon starts talking to imaginary friends that turn out to be not so imaginary at all. And when he suddenly disappears after an argument he has with Laura, Laura and Carlos are plunged into two very different nightmares. The first is almost tangible in that it deals with the potential loss of their son, who goes missing for months. The second exists along the gray edges of a parallel state, which Laura is able to tap into. The fact that Carlos can’t causes its share of friction between the two.

What ensues is everything you could hope for from a good ghost story--moody cinematography, mysterious figures appearing, dead children lurking, psychics tapping into a world nobody wants to face, and a complex puzzle of unearthed secrets that eventually lead to one massive plot twist. That the film was produced by Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Hellboy II”) only bolsters the production. His influence is clear throughout, but in key scenes, so is Hitchcock’s.

Grades:

“Prom Night”--D

“The Orphanage”--A-