Essentially a film about bereavement, grief and personal loss, this life affirming tragedy about death and coming to terms with life makes the important point that we should not live in the past but neither should we forget.
However, this movie’s plot holes are matched by an inconsistent tone in the horror often being used to trump narrative logic. Why would a social worker give the mother a confidential file about an orphan that contains information the mother was already perfectly well aware of? Why would the mother go out into the garden to investigate a mysterious banging - on her own, without a torch and in the middle of the night? Why is a hidden part of the house unknown to the couple here even though they have architects’ drawings of the house? Why don’t brakes screech (or horns blare) before someone is knocked over – was the driver blind? Yet, the movie is completely emotionally plausible despite these, often pointless, horror movie cliches.
These dramaturgical problems are exacerbated by infrequently gratuitous gore that serves no dramatic purpose and reveals a commercially conscious fear that audiences will be bored with “mere” psychological horror despite the above average and somewhat original story. This prior insult to this film’s potential audience reveals a lack of self confidence in the strong storyline. It also demonstrates a conflict at the heart of the movie between making the audience feel fear and actually fearing the audience themselves. And a ghost that fears the living ain’t gonna scare no one!
Ultimately, this film defines motherhood as believing is seeing (active participation in the growing child) rather than seeing is believing (viewing your child from an emotional distance) and waiting – like a neutral and objective scientist - to see how it turns out.
The excellent Belén Rueda is utterly convincing as the mother who sees no true distinction between being a natural or an adoptive parent in her leonine desire to protect her “cub”. She faces every fear – even the triteness of scared, physically vulnerable women walking along darkened corridors in old Victorian mansions. Without her presence and performance, this movie would fall flat on its somewhat hackneyed face.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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