The Orphanage

I gave it 5 stars for the boy that played Nathan he was exceptional! The rest of the film not so much!

The movie the The Orphange is a very bad movie. The script could have been better and the acting was terrible.. Save your money do not purchase this movie.

*Spoilers ahead--but I'm saving you an hour and a half that you'll never get back*With it being Halloween last night, my sister and I hit up our local video store with the intention of renting Guillermo del Toro's 2007 horror film The Orphanage, which had largely positive reviews on IMBD, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. Instead, the video store employee gave us this pile of steaming garbage. About 5 minutes in we realized we were given the wrong film, but we decided to tough it out, despite the dissent of my teenage niece and nephew who both said "OMG, this looks like a horrible movie." Well...they couldn't have been more correct.As am optimist, I try to see the positive in everything, so I feel obligated to say at least one good thing about this film. The movie jacket is pretty interesting, and that's about it. Also, the young male actor who plays Nathan in the movie gave what was practically an Oscar winning performance, compared to the band of adult actors--who must have been rejected from every community theater production in the country.Bad acting, a laughable screenplay, and there is virtually no plot--other than the much repeated vague notion from an overly helpful child therapist that "there is something very wrong at this place." This movie consists of the young lead being yelled at by the creepy orphanage director for basically existing and him awaking startled on multiple nights to a shadowy figure in the hallway. It was spoken aloud that the orphanage was haunted, but that plot point never really went beyond the appearance of the shadow figure. Then it was hinted that there might be some kind of pedophile ring involving the institution's director and doctor, which came from a couple of very uncomfortable scenes of unnecessarily close contact with the young lead that made me want to call Chris Hansen to tell these gentlemen to "Have a seat right over there." Finally, within the last 20 minutes of this disaster, it was revealed that the doctor was lobotomizing the kids who even showed the slightest sign of acting out, and this was apparently the plan for Nathan all along. We then learn from a rushed soliloquy from the male lead had been working all along with the child therapist and who I'm guessing was the property's gardener (his position was never really revealed--he was just kind of there) to bust the place for its cruel practices. This results in the police rushing in as Nathan is on the operating table and blowing the brains (or what looks like to be confetti, red dye, and corn syrup) out of the director in the dramatic conclusion.I just...no. There is so much confusion. It's as if a D film student at a community college decided to hit the bong, write a horror screenplay, and shoot a film over the course of a few days with random people on the street. Please don't waste your time.

True to depicting how bad some orphanages are even today.

You know how they say people always have regrets right before they die? Well, I would like to help people avoid having watched this movie be one of the the things they regret on their deathbed.Amazon really needs to allow zero star reviews. Even a zero star review is way too good for this movie. It actually caused us mental anguish to watch this movie. So why did you watch this movie to the end if it was really that bad, I hear you saying? There were a couple of reasons. I'm sure you're familiar with people saying that something was so horrible but they just couldn't look away? This movie was like that, but even that probably wouldn't have kept us watching the movie until the end. The second thing is that I think the people who made this movie knew just how awful it was so they decided to try and deceive people into watching it. We thought we were watching another movie with the same title that has very good reviews. This was not just a silly mistake. If you do a search on the Internet you will be hard pressed to find this movie. Only the other movie with the same title comes up. THIS movie was renamed to give it the same title as the good movie with the same name. There is all kinds of deception involved with this piece of garbage that doesn't deserve to be called a movie. It gives home movies a bad name.Let's start with the picture you see here with the little boy holding the knife. There is no one like that in the movie. Then there is the description of the movie that describes the boy who actually does appear in the movie as evil. He is NOT evil in any way. At least I have never heard anyone describe victims of child abuse as evil.The movie itself is literally bad in EVERY way. I have never seen a movie so comprehensively bad. The cast is clearly not comprised of actors. Apparently, whoever made the movie just asked some friends, and maybe family members, if they would like to be in a movie. They probably worked for free, but they were still overpaid. They can't act at all, none of them. They also have no personality. There is nothing even remotely interesting about any of them, it's like they had their personalities removed. The camera work looks like it was done by a monkey. The sound is a joke. It sounds like it was done in a bathroom. The music appears to be a guy occasionally playing on the piano. It's terrible. The only good thing you can say about this movie is that it will eventually end after what seems like five hours. (Even though it's only ninety-one minutes long.)Watch the other movie with the same name!

Misleading pic on DVD case makes you think it's going to be one of those haunted orphanage stories. NOPE. It's more of a drama about the adults taking any kids they deem to be bad and, well, just think of what happens to MacMurphy at the end of Cuckoo's nest. The acting from the young boy playing the lead character is the only good thing here.

It's a really good movie.The other posters did not pay attention....it's the kind of movie that leaves things open to interpretation.The cops blasted the dean in the head because it was apparent he was part of some kind of bizarre plot to lobotomize kids for heaven knows what reason. As far as why the children act like loonies in ward b who knows. I thought it was a good movie.It's true that the acting isn't too great in certain respects but it's kreepy as heck.Watch this at 2 AM and tell me it doesn't freak you out. What would be good would be an explanation by the director as to what happened to the kooky "dr" and the rest of the staff at the institution.

This is not a horror movie. More like an open-ended drama. This movie is full of hints and suggestions - Never does it say in script or in picture what really happens. Also, there are slightly disturbing scenes, but absolutely nothing, and i mean NOTHING scary as far as a horror movie is concerned. This movie is set up to be appreciated only by the few who enjoy this particular type of movie.