Juan Antonio Bayona’s El Orfanato (2007) is a Spanish horror film that illustrates the Spanish ghost story while also representing the tragic loss of childhood. Laura returns to the orphanage where she was raised, hoping to re-open it. Instead, her son Simón goes missing seemingly at the hands of ghosts from her past. The disappearance and subsequent death of her son, as well as her reunion with her ghostly childhood friends symbolizes significant aspects of Spain’s traumatic history. This can be seen through the use of multiple genre approaches to the narrative, specifically the socio-cultural approach. The socio-cultural approach cites that “…the repetitive nature of key elements…” are the aspects that “…imbues a genre with social significance…”
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Due to the amplified “international” aspect in relation with the production of the Spanish horror genre, it is argued that level of internationalism apparent in contemporary Spanish horror greatly alters the narrative and form (Olney 378). While this is a valid point, I argue that the Spanish horror genre still maintains distinctive patterns and themes that separate it from the general Hollywood horror genre. Olney mentions two key patterns that are distinctive in these film, the centrality of children as well as a theme of antiauthoritarianism stemming from the Franco regime (378-379). In El Orfanato, the centrality of children can be seen in the characters of Simón and Laura’s ghostly childhood friends. A common theme in regard with children in the Spanish horror genre, is the victimization they are subjected to “…by those closest to them…” (378). El Orfanato effectively displays this in two key instances. The first can be seen with Laura’s disabled childhood friends. They are poisoned by the nun Benigna, who was their caretaker, as a form of retribution for the accidental death of her own son Tomás. She later hid their exhumed remains on the property of the orphanage. The second instance is the incident with Simón and Laura, near the end of the film. Laura realizes that she was the one who accidently locked Simón in the secret room and, as a result, he fell and broke his neck. This corroborates with Olney’s explanation that despite caring for their children’s safety, “…they often inadvertently act against those interests…” and in a split moment inadvertently kill their own children (379). This also coincides with Ann Davies’ description of ‘The Monstrous Feminine’, both Benigna and Laura can be regarded as the “…central motif of mothers as monsters”
Due to the amplified “international” aspect in relation with the production of the Spanish horror genre, it is argued that level of internationalism apparent in contemporary Spanish horror greatly alters the narrative and form (Olney 378). While this is a valid point, I argue that the Spanish horror genre still maintains distinctive patterns and themes that separate it from the general Hollywood horror genre. Olney mentions two key patterns that are distinctive in these film, the centrality of children as well as a theme of antiauthoritarianism stemming from the Franco regime (378-379). In El Orfanato, the centrality of children can be seen in the characters of Simón and Laura’s ghostly childhood friends. A common theme in regard with children in the Spanish horror genre, is the victimization they are subjected to “…by those closest to them…” (378). El Orfanato effectively displays this in two key instances. The first can be seen with Laura’s disabled childhood friends. They are poisoned by the nun Benigna, who was their caretaker, as a form of retribution for the accidental death of her own son Tomás. She later hid their exhumed remains on the property of the orphanage. The second instance is the incident with Simón and Laura, near the end of the film. Laura realizes that she was the one who accidently locked Simón in the secret room and, as a result, he fell and broke his neck. This corroborates with Olney’s explanation that despite caring for their children’s safety, “…they often inadvertently act against those interests…” and in a split moment inadvertently kill their own children (379). This also coincides with Ann Davies’ description of ‘The Monstrous Feminine’, both Benigna and Laura can be regarded as the “…central motif of mothers as monsters”