Alejandro Amenábar
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The Orphanage (2007)
Directed by J. A. Bayona
influenced by The Others (2001), The Sea Inside (2004)
Themes
Fans of the Gothic have had to make do with a handful of Japanese ghost stories (including Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s chilling Pulse ), a couple of visionary films by horror standard-bearer Guillermo del Toro, The Orphanage (a decent del Toro imitation), and – bringing up the rear in more than one way – the Paranormal Activity series.
Most of the zealous reviews greeting the debut feature of Guillermo del Toro protégé Juan Antonio Bayona cite the latter’s influences, from The Innocents to The Others, and there’s the rub: there are far too many to allow his supernatural horror/thriller to forge its own identity.
Elements of any number of other moody ghost stories—from fellow Spaniard Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others all the way back to The Turn of the Screw—show up in the film, and Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez do a perfectly competent job of re-creating the solemn, ominous tone of those past works while conveying little of their urgency or genuine emotion.
Here The Orphanage recalls previous haunted house movies, from Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Kubrick’s The Shining, to Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others and The Devil’s Backbone (whose brilliant, bighearted director, Guillermo del Toro, is the present film’s producer).
A Goth-Iberian “Peter Pan” with roots in such vintage spookfests as Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” (1963) and Alejandro Amenabar’s “The Others” (2001),“The Orphanage” is the best haunted-house-cum-ghost-movie I have seen in years.
Horror films with an elegant touch are fast becoming a Spanish movie tradition, as witness The Devil’s Backbone, directed in Spain by Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro, and the Nicole Kidman starrer The Others, from Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.
The very first glimpse of the massive stone building brings with it an air of foreboding much in the same way films like The Others and The Haunting (the 1963 version) used their settings almost as an additional character.
A haunted, post-WWI England is the setting for “The Awakening,” an enjoyably old-fashioned ghost story in the vein of “The Others” and “The Orphanage.”
Though handsome to look at, so-so supernatural chiller “The Awakening” recalls “The Others,” “The Orphanage” and other haunted-house tales of recent vintage, making an impression more derivative than memorable.
Set in a 1921 England still reeling from World War I and the influenza pandemic that followed, The Awakening is an upscale supernatural tale in the vein of The Orphanage and The Others , a film that tries to balance its genre elements with human drama.
"The Awakening" is reminiscent of 2001's " The Others ," 2007's " The Orphanage " and, most recently, 2012's " The Woman in Black ."
The movie bears some resemblance to Alejandro Amenábar's 2001 spooky-dreamy chiller "The Others."
It most closely resembles the Henry James story "Turn of the Screw," as that one was filmed by Jack Clayton and was called "The Innocents."
Let's just say that what we have here is a delicious little ghost story that takes place within the confines of a single haunted house and recalls such minimalist classics of the genre as "The Innocents" and the original version of "The Haunting."
Perhaps the most obvious inspirations for "The Others" are Robert Wise's 1963 "The Haunting," still the greatest of all haunted-house films despite the inept 1999 remake, and "The Innocents," Jack Clayton's outstanding 1961 screen adaptation of "Turn of the Screw."
At its best, Alejandro Amenabar's "The Others" is reminiscent of "The Innocents," Jack Clayton's marvelously creepy 1960 version of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw."
Alejandro Amenabar ("Open Your Eyes") has taken a page from "The Innocents" and created a spooky, psychological, gothic ghost story of a time gone by.
In the tradition of the most eerie vintage gothic ghost stories (think The Innocents, or The Uninvited), The Others sets the stage for chills with an isolated mansion, long dark hallways, flickering candles, and things that go bump in the night.
There are moments which recall The Orphanage (a creepy game of 'What's the time, Mr Wolf?', for instance) and it's certainly in that classier vein of period horror – see also The Innocents and The Others – with its credibility enhanced immeasurably by Brown Findlay, who brings guts and pathos to Marianne's plight.
The effort from director Christopher Smith is undoubtedly inspired by the likes of The Others , The Changeling , and most recently Crimson Peak .
The same goes for obvious inspirations on this project like “The Innocents” or “The Others.”
This has led to classics like 1961’s The Innocents , the more recent The Others , and the underrated The Little Stranger .
In substance and tenor, this costume piece fits nicely into the general category of Brit period ghost stories, like The Woman in Black and The Others .
— whisper-sniveling dialogue like “Denial is the teat on which the beast will suckle,” and you’re well on your way toward sating a Gothic horror fan’s lifelong hunger for new films in the spirit of “The Innocents,” “The Haunting,” and “The Others.”
The atmosphere and Gothic aesthetic feels like classic supernatural horror in the vein of Robert Wise’s “The Haunting,” with reliance on old school horror devices and unique elements of mystery and ambiguity rather than full CGI.
This fact may have been lost on effects-happy Hollywood (Exhibit A: Jan DeBont's high-tech--and thoroughly unscary--remake of Robert Wise's understated classic, The Haunting ), but thankfully it hasn't been lost on Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amen´bar, whose English-language debut The Others packs a formidable fright simply through the time-tested special effect of atmosphere.
Several additional films, like "The Others," have raised a few goose pimples of their own, but nothing quite to compare to the low-key chills of "The Haunting."
But in reality, this film has a lot more in common with such classic haunted-house tales as 1944's "The Uninvited" and the original 1963 version of "The Haunting."
I'm tempted to call The Others the best haunted house film since Robert Wise's 1963 masterstroke The Haunting.
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
Directed by Peter Cornwell
influenced by The Others (2001)
Visuals Themes Plot
But what galls me – and what will have other genre fans gnashing their teeth down to the sublingual tissue – is that Cornwell's film, stylistically at least, is really "based" on snips and snatches of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, Mario Bava's Shock, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, and, of course, The Amityville Horror.
Hidden between the floorboards are numerous old-timey photographs of dead folks à la The Others .
As for the extended nighttime climax that borrows from "The Exorcist," " The Shining ," " Psycho ," " The Others ," and " The Ring ," it is so packed with silly events that all one can do is roll their eyes at the lunacy.
No less than seven films and TV shows regarding The Amityville Horror , a similar case, have been made and Hollywood hasn’t been able to resist even fictional yarns such as The Others in recent years.
At its best, the minimalist setting creates the haunting impression of “The Others” in the woods, with hints of the precise formalism that made last year’s “Hereditary” such a haunting immersion.
The Lodge has echoes of gothic-horror drawn from a surfeit of films like The Innocents (1961), The Nightcomers (1971), Night Watch (1973), Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964), Images (1972), The Others (2001), and The Shining (1980) although these films work better as atmospheric clues to the story rather than outright references.
Directors Franz and Fiala (along with their scriptwriting partner Sergio Casci) drop in a tribute to John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and appear to be fans of the aforementioned “The Shining” and “The Others,” among other horror classics, judging by certain plot elements and visual references.
At one point the characters themselves seem to stop just short of invoking the plot of “The Others,” a horror picture they may have seen once upon a happier time.
Even by genre film standards, what goes on here requires so many lapses of logic, starting with the half-assed explanation required to get Richard out of the house (not to mention the icky fact that he first met Grace while researching the story of her father’s cult for a book), that the screenplay by Fiala, Franz and Sergio Casci feels more like a lazy and increasingly half-assed attempt to rehash elements of “The Shining,” “The Others” and “Hereditary” than anything else and while they do manage to generate a convincingly frigid atmosphere, they don’t do much of anything with it.
“The Lodge,” which climbs from low-level melancholy to all-out hysteria, tips its hat to several predecessors, “Hereditary,” “The Shining” and “The Others” among them.
With its spooky house, strange noises, and foggy scenes, The Others reminded me of The Uninvited, one of my favorite films of the forties starring Ray Milland and Gail Russell.
But in reality, this film has a lot more in common with such classic haunted-house tales as 1944's "The Uninvited" and the original 1963 version of "The Haunting."
I was optimistic that a new wave of well-made haunted house and ghost story films would sweep through cinemas, horror films would once more win Oscars, and maybe even Dario Argento might get the money and inspiration to make something like Suspiria again.
You might say that "The Woman in Black" is in a similar vein to the 2001 smash "The Others," but it isn't a narrative built entirely around a Shyamalanian twist ending.
Stuffed with such familiar period touches as mechanical toys and mysteriously opening doors, it suffers by comparison to such similar films as “The Orphanage” and “The Others.’’
This is what separates “The Woman in Black” from truly great ghost movies such as “The Innocents,” “The Haunting” and “The Others.”
It's lovely to see the Boy Who Lived move on, but don't expect The Woman in Black to be nearly as memorable as Harry Potter or as creepily mind-blowing as The Others .
The best ghost stories are the ones that rely on careful exposition and a pervasive sense of mounting dread to unsettle audiences (The Others and The Orphanage being modern examples), but director James Watkins and scripter Jane Goldman abandon that approach shockingly fast.
Watkins and his team pull out all the classic horror clichés to energize Jane Goldman’s flaccid and confused screenplay (she’s adapting Susan Hill’s 1983 novel), stealing cues from Juan Antonio Bayona’s far superior The Orphanage while desperately trying to emulate Alejandro Amenábar’s overrated The Others.
At its best, Alejandro Amenabar's "The Others" is reminiscent of "The Innocents," Jack Clayton's marvelously creepy 1960 version of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw."
Derivative though masterfully shot, the movie echoes Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, though if Kidman's character weren't so sympathetic, you could call this The Turn of the Shrew.
It is complex and literate, as psychologically unnerving as Henry James’ novel The Turn of the Screw.
It’s been a long while since we’ve had a good-old-fashioned haunted-house movie, an elegant chiller in the vein of The Innocents or, more recently, 2001’s stylish sleeper hit The Others .
Robbins is his co-writer again on a film which joins the tradition of superior ghost stories like The Innocents , The Others and Rebecca .
Viewers expecting Hellboy or Pacific Rim may be disappointed, but fans of slow-burn ghostly fare like Nicole Kidman’s The Others and del Toro’s own Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will enjoy the feel of their skin both crawling and tingling.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Writer-director Corinna Faith has cited the Nicole Kidman scare-fest The Others in interviews, as well as The Woman in Black .
Writer-director Corinna Faith takes her cues from The Woman In Black and The Others by invoking a feminine spirit in one isolated location – a hospital in a poor area of East London with many a darkened corridor to get lost down.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced The Others (2001)
Visuals Plot Themes
Here he has fashioned a tonal and stylistic tribute to the eerie kid- fright of "The Spirit of the Beehive," "The Sixth Sense" and to Hitchcock.
The Sixth Sense casts a long shadow over movies like this, and sometimes The Others can't resist borrowing a few twists and turns from that earlier film.
Were it not for the huge and surprising success of 1999's "The Sixth Sense", this horror-thriller would not have been conceived, written nor green-lighted.
Like The Sixth Sense, The Others relies more on atmosphere than standard horror "beats."
Make the story scarier and more unnerving than The Sixth Sense — but do it without any gory or gross imagery; almost without special effects.
By taking healthy doses of "The Shining", "The Sixth Sense" and Alfred Hitchcock and mixing thoroughly, Mr. Amenábar creates a haunted house that is at once familiar and unique.
More reminiscent of "The Others" (Nicole Kidman) than, even, Nakata's The Ring, he departs from the usual setting for such intrigues of the mind by a haunted apartment complex on Roosevelt Island in the East River off Manahattan.
Touchstone would be wise to position “Dark Water” as a movie more akin to “The Others” than “The Ring,” if it hopes to find the audience the movie deserves.
Despite an unsatisfactory ending, Dark Water emerges as a must-see for viewers who enjoyed such memorable ghost stories as The Sixth Sense , The Shining and The Others .
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Directed by Cameron Crowe
influenced by Open Your Eyes (1997), The Sea Inside (2004)
Plot Themes
Vanilla Sky (the name refers to a painting by Monet) is the quirkily titled American remake of the 1997 Spanish language feature, Open Your Eyes .
Written by Cameron Crowe based on the film Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos), by Alejandro Amenábar.
In "Vanilla Sky" -- a remake of Alejandro Amenabar's "Abre los ojos" ("Open Your Eyes"), which also featured Cruz -- Tom Cruise is a young publishing hotshot who, like a bumblebee in Helmut Lang, flits from flower to flower, never landing long enough to fall in love.
Before Waking Life asked whether our day-to-day lives might be just a dream from which we have yet to wake up, and before The Matrix suggested that the world was an illusion fed to our minds by an evil computer network, there was Open Your Eyes, a 1997 film by a young, up-and-coming Spanish director, then in his mid-20s, named Alejandro Amenabar, which explored similar questions about the nature of reality.
And unlike Steven Soderbergh who took a bad movie and remade it from the ground up with Ocean's Eleven , Crowe took a great movie, Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes , and began whittling at it from the top down.
Then again, so was "Open Your Eyes," the Spanish film it's based on.
The Skeleton Key (2005)
Directed by Iain Softley
influenced by The Others (2001), Open Your Eyes (1997)
Plot Visuals Themes
And given that the parlor trick being played here is a complex one, the lengths to which the script must go in order to move the various pieces into place are pretty extensive; and whereas in films like “The Sixth Sense” or “The Others”, where we are given sufficient material to distract us from the fact that the dealer is slipping an ace out of his sleeve and into the deck, here the over-complicated plot mechanisms unfortunately just draw attention to the fact that someone’s putting one over on us.
It's hard not to wonder what "The Skeleton Key" might have been in the hands of a director with a gift for visceral disquietude like Alejandro Amenábar ( "Open Your Eyes," "The Others" ), David Fincher ( "Se7en," "Fight Club" ) or Darren Aronofsky ( "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream" ).
For all its dark, Gothic intentions and supernatural twists, it lacks the emotional and intellectual punch of similarly themed films, most notably Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others."
Think Nicole Kidman in "The Others," Halle Berry in "Gothika," and Naomi Watts in "The Ring."
Like almost every psychological horror flick spawned from Hollywood these days -- from "The Forgotten" to "Hide and Seek" to 2001's exceptional "The Others" -- "The Skeleton Key" creates a mood of general foreboding, sprinkles in a few spine-straightening jolts, then caps it all off with a twist ending that, in this case, viewers may not see coming.
It's hard not to wonder what "The Skeleton Key" might have been in the hands of a director with a gift for visceral disquietude like Alejandro Amenábar ( "Open Your Eyes," "The Others" ), David Fincher ( "Se7en," "Fight Club" ) or Darren Aronofsky ( "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream" ).
Here he has fashioned a tonal and stylistic tribute to the eerie kid- fright of "The Spirit of the Beehive," "The Sixth Sense" and to Hitchcock.
Film buffs should look out for the knowing nods to "Rebecca" and "The Shining".
By taking healthy doses of "The Shining", "The Sixth Sense" and Alfred Hitchcock and mixing thoroughly, Mr. Amenábar creates a haunted house that is at once familiar and unique.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced by The Sea Inside (2004), The Others (2001)
Allen revels in Barcelona, photographing (cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe, "Talk to Her," "The Sea Inside") all the relevant points of interest, paying special attention to the architecture of Antoni Gaudí.
His cinematographer this time is Javier Aguirresarobe, best known for The Others , Talk to Her and The Sea Inside .
Allen appears in perfect concert with the Spanish locations, graciously revealing the beauty of the land through the master shooting of cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (“Talk to Her,” “The Sea Inside”), filling the frame with golden Euro delights.
Plus, the cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe (of Talk to Her and The Sea Inside ) is actually well-thought out and significant, unheard of in a Woody Allen film; looking somewhat like a sun-washed Almodóvar film, the palette is full of colors muted into shades of gold and yellow.
His cinematographer this time is Javier Aguirresarobe, best known for The Others , Talk to Her and The Sea Inside .
The picture works as a travelogue?Barcelona and the surrounding areas of Spain are captured by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (2001's " The Others ") in all of their sun-dappled, intoxicating, old-world grandeur?and it also works, at least most of the time, as a multilayered romance between people testing their own boundaries and values as they relate to sex and relationships.