Watching the Movies (...or Not Quite)

Confession: bits of the movies for this week I "watched" by means of my boyfriend--as I hid under a blanket and covered my ears, he'd observe and then report back to me at a quiet moment. I really couldn't take it. I didn't even want to finish The Orphanage at first, but I realized that I had to know what happened, even if it was going to give me nightmares.

I think what surprised me in the end, then, was that I WASN'T terrified to hear what had happened. I didn't want to watch it (not only was I under a blanket, the TV was on mute, so he was just reading the subtitles and telling me what happened now and then) because I couldn't take that feeling of suspense, of not knowing... but as soon as it was over and he told me I kind of wished I had. Because when I knew the ending, I realized I could've watched the whole thing again without being terrified (...though not that I particularly wanted to). Now, I'm not writing this to brag about how much of a wimp I am--I just find it interesting.

I had heard about Pan's Laybrinth (interesting that he seems to just be called "The Faun" in the Spanish title) and how it wasn't really scary, just creepy sometimes, so I was okay with that. And it felt more fantasy-ish than like a ghost story. But The Orphanage felt like a ghost story immediately, and I couldn't take the suspense anymore after the scene where the mother is lying in bed talking to her husband but then he comes out of another room so who was in the bed. (A poster just fell off my wall and scared me half to death. Seriously, you guys, this stuff isn't good for me. :P) I stopped watching because I assumed it was going to end like a ghost story, too, and I didn't want to give myself even more fuel for being awake in the middle of the night being afraid of every little sound.

In the end, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was surprised how I had been made aware of the techniques used to make the movie seem scary and how we really get into the mother's psychological state when really thins aren't as they seem. I don't watch scary movies, so I don't know how typical this is, but it didn't feel like a very typical kind of ending and, in the end, I thought that maybe it wasn't entirely a horror movie.

Except the scene with Benigna and the baby carriage was just awful.

Also, people in Spain wear their wedding rings on their RIGHT ring fingers. I noticed that in both movies.

Meg