Ghost Stories

by 'tamerlane'

What better way to spend Halloween than with some scary ghost stories? Here are three that won't disappoint. Each combines classic themes (lonely old houses, bumps in the night, apparitions) with top-notch acting, masterful cinematography, and clever plots that interweave perception with misperception. No need for cheap, slasher-style gore or incongruous 'happenings' to give you the chills. Instead, like the protagonists, you cannot resist being lead down a dark and winding path to uncover the terrifying truth. Good, intelligent films in their own right, these three pursue novel interpretations of stock ghost story elements that still leave you shuddering.



The Orphanage (2007)
El orfanato

Laura (Belen Rueda), a former orphan, returns with her husband and her own adopted son, Simon, to renovate the abandoned orphanage where she was raised.

While his parents prepare the secluded building to be a home for special needs children, Simon has only his imaginary friend to play with. One day, Simon talks of six new imaginary friends, with names familiar to Laura, who tell Simon things about the past he could not know.

When Simon disappears during a garden party, his father calls the police, but Laura is convinced he has been abducted by ghosts from her past. Months pass, and when the disconsolate Laura calls in a medium (the perfectly cast Geraldine Chaplin) to contact Simon, her pragmatic husband returns to the city, leaving Laura alone in the orphanage to track down her ghosts.

Scariest Moment: A simple long shot down a hall, when Laura is uncertain whether her son or a ghost is approaching.

The Orphanage is a very, very scary movie that excels in every area. Sergio Sanchez' watertight plots mirrors a scavenger hunt game Simon plays with his mother, in which each object found is a clue pointing to the location of the next. The big, old building, empty yet with room after room cluttered with dusty old things, and perched on an isolated sea cliff, is employed subtly and never as a crutch or as a cliche. Director Juan Antonio Bayona's camerawork, especially his pans, are as good or better than any found in Hitchcock or Rosemary's Baby.

Running parallel to the ghost story is the subtext of Laura's unresolved issues about her childhood, which cloud her perception of events, and of her relationship with her family. Ultimately, The Orphanage is about the struggle for moderation between emotion and reason.


The Others (2001)

It is 1945, and Grace (Nicole Kidman), her husband not returned from the war, lives in a large, secluded mansion in the middle of nowhere. With her are her two young children, who suffer from a rare and dangerous photosensitivity disease, and must spend there entire lives in darkened rooms. The strain and the loneliness is getting to the tightly-wound Grace, so she hires a nanny (the marvelous Fionnula Flanagan) a cook and a gardener, who seem to know the old house better than they let on.

Before long, the inevitable spookiness begins-footsteps, objects disturbed, the faint sound of the piano being played in a locked room. With glee, Grace's daughter frightens her brother by telling him she has seen and played with one of "the others" who have invaded the house. As the hauntings become more frequent and extreme, Grace furiously tries to protect her children while solving the mystery.


Scariest moment: Poking through old clutter, Grace finds a photo album of Victorian portraits. She asks the nanny why the people were photographed sleeping, and is informed they are photos of the dead. (Note: such photos were common. Google "victorian death portraits" if you dare.)

The Others heightens the viewer's anxiety by presenting events through the unreliable eyes of Grace. Kidman gives us a Grace already about to burst when the story starts. Needing to monitor her children's every move lest they be exposed to sunlight, and also obsessed with their moral and religious development, Grace shows the visible effects of running a large house without another adult soul to accompany her. Grace is clearly not telling us everything (When is daddy coming home? Why did the previous staff leave? Why is her son afraid of mommy losing her temper?) But Grace also refuses to hear what is being told to her. When the poltergeists disrupt her micro-managed world, Grace rapidly unhinges as she desperately tries to keep her world intact.


The Devil's Backbone (2001)
El espinazo del diablo

Near the end of the Spanish civil war, a remote orphanage run by Republicans awaits the impending arrival of the fascists. Young Carlos, a new arrival, is informed by the other boys of the presence of the ghost of a former occupant.

While the adults running the orphanage confront the demons of their past, as well as the ominous terrors looming on the horizon, Carlos explores the bowels of the orphanage to uncover the secret held by the ghost. As the various story lines swirl and converge, and the secrets are gradually revealed, the horrors presented by the dead cannot match those done by the living.

Scariest moment: Thinking he hears the ghost approaching, Carlos flees, struggling to squeeze through a partly closed door while something grabs at his leg.

With The Devil's Backbone, writer/director Guillermo del Toro explores much of the same ground as in Pan's Labyrinth (2006), but it is fertile ground. Here too, del Toro parallels a supernatural tale seen from a child's perspective with real-life, adult events. Del Toro often presents the same events from both angles, and the perspectives are interchangeable. To uncover the most monstrous apparition imaginable, del Toro tells us, one need not resort to ghosts. It can be found in the hearts of other people.

Imagery moves this story. The unexploded bomb lodged in the courtyard is a conscious metaphor for doom merely postponed. When a piece of debris from an explosion flies straight into the camera, it underscores the utter meaninglessness of random death. That an ugly old secret is not-so-secret after all, is revealed by panning cross-wall to follow muffled voices from one room to the next. The sense of safety from the war, provided by the orphanage's isolation, is undermined by frequent, nervous glances at the horizon.

It is no surprise that del Toro focused, as did the makers of i>The Orphanage and The Others, on isolated or orphaned children. Every good ghost story taps into our childhood fears of being alone in the dark. Beyond that, however, the child's viewpoint is allegorical. In these films, when the adults are blinded by preconceptions, it is the unclouded vision of the child which can perceive what is real. It is the child whose innocence lends the bravery to confront the horrific truth that the adult dismisses with wishful thinking.

From time immemorial, ghost stories have helped us make peace with our fears-with disease and growing old, with famine and wars, or simply with what lay beyond the flicker of the bonfire. These modern ghost stories tackle those same fears in new guises, those things beyond our control that make us feel as helpless as children.