J. A. Bayona
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Poltergeist (1982)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
influenced The Orphanage (2007), A Monster Calls (2016)
Themes Visuals
The Orphanage is a languid supernatural thriller in which spotting the influences—a little Poltergeist here, a little Sixth Sense there—is more involving than the story itself.
As the camera looks down on this short figure (evoking Don’t Look Now as much as The Omen or Poltergeist—it assumes her limited perspective, and you realize (again) that you’re locked into a troubled, probably untruthful view.
There are passages obviously borrowed from "Poltergeist," from David Lynch, and a compressed flashback that's more than a nod to M. Night Shyamalan.
Contrary to its title, The Orphanage is a movie with many forebears, starting with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents, The Others and the whole cycle of possessed child movies from the seventies and eighties, including from The Exorcist, The Omen and Poltergeist.
Guillermo del Toro has taught us this, first by directing the chilling "Devil's Backbone" and now by producing something simply called "The Orphanage," which is as tingly and creepy a ghost story as you could wish for, recalling classics like "Poltergeist," "The Sixth Sense," and "The Others."
There's a piece of The Others here, a touch of The Sixth Sense there, a pinch of Poltergeist, a smidgen of Friday The 13th, and even a streak of Pan's Labyrinth (which shouldn't be too much of a surprise, since Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro produced The Orphanage).
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.
This is a haunted-house ghost story that derives its unsettling effect from a skillfully built atmosphere of mounting dread, reaching back beyond the pop-slaughterhouse sensibilities of most current fright flicks to older films like "The Innocents" and "The Uninvited" — pictures in which a sense of the uncanny was summoned not with hacksaws and cleavers, but with a simple creak in the night.
The movie, recalling "The Innocents" and any number of children-in-ghostly-peril stories, is set almost entirely at a former orphanage on the southern coast of Spain.
Contrary to its title, The Orphanage is a movie with many forebears, starting with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents, The Others and the whole cycle of possessed child movies from the seventies and eighties, including from The Exorcist, The Omen and Poltergeist.
Hints of "Peter Pan," as well as "The Innocents," "The Others," "The Shining" and other big-old-house horror classics, float through it like ghosts on a windy night, and Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez twist them into a genuinely haunting tale.
The disappearance and the arrival of scientific ghost hunters (led by Geraldine Chaplin) are reminiscent of "Poltergeist" (1982), although Bayona more frequently strives for the rarefied psychological suggestiveness of "The Haunting" (1963) and Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw" (as well as its 1961 movie adaptation, "The Innocents").
The Devil's Backbone (2001)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced The Orphanage (2007), A Monster Calls (2016)
Themes
One of those revealed credits is for executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, whose atmospheric Spain-set horror films The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth are another strong influence on The Orphanage, which as it happens is also an atmospheric horror film set in Spain.
A doom-laden Spanish thriller about the ghostly goings-on of castoff children, The Orphanage isn't as scary as Guillermo Del Toro's similarly themed The Devil's Backbone.
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).
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.
It's a Spanish production, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, whose work has mainly been in Spanish television and music videos, but it was produced by Guillermo del Toro of "Pan's Labyrinth," "Hellboy," and "The Devil's Backbone" fame.
Art-house hits from the 1970s like "Cría Cuervos" and "Spirit of the Beehive" told of phantasms and repression and, more recently, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro has crossed the Atlantic to make acclaimed horror-fantasies there: "The Devil's Backbone" (2001) and "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006).
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.
The disappearance and the arrival of scientific ghost hunters (led by Geraldine Chaplin) are reminiscent of "Poltergeist" (1982), although Bayona more frequently strives for the rarefied psychological suggestiveness of "The Haunting" (1963) and Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw" (as well as its 1961 movie adaptation, "The Innocents").
Debuting feature director Juan Antonio Bayona and first-time feature writer Sergio G. Sánchez have fashioned a chiller with direct echoes of The Others, along with debts to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Contrary to its title, The Orphanage is a movie with many forebears, starting with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents, The Others and the whole cycle of possessed child movies from the seventies and eighties, including from The Exorcist, The Omen and Poltergeist.
The disappearance and the arrival of scientific ghost hunters (led by Geraldine Chaplin) are reminiscent of "Poltergeist" (1982), although Bayona more frequently strives for the rarefied psychological suggestiveness of "The Haunting" (1963) and Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw" (as well as its 1961 movie adaptation, "The Innocents").
But like unsuccessful 1972 and 92 visualizations of Henry Jamess suggestive The Turn of the Screw, and in contrast to the excellent 1961 Deborah Kerr-Michael Redgrave interpretation, The Orphanage tritely twists too many specious screws too often, and it depends heavily on creaking woodwork and hinges, slammed doors and secret panels giving onto basement stairs, on thunderclaps, crypts, apparitions, sinister children and mental instability.
The Others (2001)
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
influenced The Orphanage (2007), A Monster Calls (2016)
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.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), A Monster Calls (2016)
Visuals Plot
Back in the US, Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm (who appeared in the very first Jurassic Park a quarter of a century ago), is warning the politicians that humanity is on the verge of “man-made cataclysmic change”.
This mission, staged in inclement weather, does not go as planned, and it is gloriously staged, something out of classic “Jurassic Park.”
She's recruited by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), an agent of billionaire Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), Richard Hammond's original partner in Jurassic Park.
Carrying a familiar amber/mosquito-topped cane and a weary sense of resignation, James Cromwell appears as a former partner/obvious substitute for Jurassic Park’s John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough).
It’s been three years since life found a way to reboot the Jurassic Park franchise in the form of Jurassic World, a disguised remake (both of Park and Jaws 3) that doubled as a funny on paper in-joke about resorting to desperate measures to renew interest in an old idea.
Here we are, 25 years on from the release of the original Jurassic Park film, and the desire for dinosaurs is as unrelenting as it was back in 1993.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Plot Visuals
Pratt downplays the cowboy charisma that helped make the human side of Jurassic World tolerable, but Owen remains cocksure enough to set the tone for developments to come: When, after arriving on Isla Nublar, the two realize there's a plan afoot to steal dinosaurs and sell them for all sorts of nefarious purposes, Claire and Owen must sneak into and sabotage the effort much like Indy did with those Nazi submarines in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This recalls bits of Raiders of the Lost Ark not just visually but also emotionally, as Claire and Owen resolve to stop bad guys who have precisely the opposite of the entire planet’s best interests at heart (never mind the dinos’ best interests!).
Among the ones I counted, and I doubtless missed some, were "Citizen Kane" (!), "The Shining" and, again and again, "Raiders of the Lost Ark." There's also a shot near the end of the film of a dinosaur on the roof of the mansion framed against the moon that should be ridiculous, and kind of is, but is also breathtaking.
There are even clever callbacks to films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, like when Owen rushes toward the camera, shouting that everyone must run from the danger right behind him.
There's far too many recalls, riffs and familiar beats from both the earlier movies and other Steven Spielberg tales (although at least one Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-off will raise a wry smile).
The first half of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom rattles along like an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark and by the time you can finally catch your breath, the action has moved from the island and on to the masterplan devised by the movie's baddies.
Ultimately “The Awakening” serves as the latest reminder of the brilliance of 2007's terrifying “The Orphanage.”
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 ."
Imagine The Woman In Black without the undead woman, The Orphanage without that masked orphan, or Nicole Kidman’s The Others without those pesky, otherworldly “others,” and you pretty much have Awakening.
Reminiscent of this year’s The BFG and 1999’s The Iron Giant, with stories entailing burgeoning relationships between young children and hulking creatures, A Monster Calls brings a unique take in its construction.
Though ostensibly aimed at children, or at least teens (check that PG-13 rating), it’s more heavy on darkness and light on fun than other movies in its conceptual wheelhouse, like the works of Hayao Miyazaki, Henry Selick’s Coraline or Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant.
More likely, “A Monster Calls” will join a long list of tragic box-office disappointments (of which “The Iron Giant” is probably the closest analogy) that are embraced as cult classics by such fantasy connoisseurs years down the road.
Lo más reciente de Bayona es parte The Iron Giant, parte Pan’s Labyrinth y parte The BFG.
The animated portions remind in feeling and abstraction of Brad Bird's incomparable The Iron Giant--a film that is itself based around the death of a loved one and the need for the survivors to recover.
A Monster Calls is a difficult movie to categorize, looking something like The Iron Giant by way of The NeverEnding Story, but in the end resembling neither.
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).
(The movie also echoes "The Shining" in some ways.)
Simón has two imaginary friends, and anyone who saw "The Shining" will already feel their neck hairs stirring.
Hints of "Peter Pan," as well as "The Innocents," "The Others," "The Shining" and other big-old-house horror classics, float through it like ghosts on a windy night, and Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez twist them into a genuinely haunting tale.
And so it goes: a little snip from The Shining here, a shot that reeks of Dario Argento there.
Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G Sánchez negotiate the inevitable clichés of the genre expertly, deftly making the expected nods to haunted-house classics both well known and less so (look out for The Shining and The Legend of Hell House), while both Rueda and Caya give perfectly judged performances as the young couple.
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced A Monster Calls (2016), The Orphanage (2007)
Visuals Characters Themes
Compared to the cartoonish effects of Steven Spielberg’s “The BFG” earlier this year, this monster is downright menacing, a hulking terror that suggests what might happen if Groot from “Guardians of the Galaxy” took steroids and wandered into “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
This powerful effect doesn’t seem so likely at the beginning, when the film resembles a stripped down version of Pan’s Labyrinth.
It almost goes without saying that Neeson’s rumbling tones are a perfect fit for the monster, whose size and murky agenda make him an endearing mix of Ted Hughes’ Iron Giant and the Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth (and a little bit of Groot).
A mix of C.G.I. spectacle and heavy emotional drama, director J.A. Bayona’s film, based on Patrick Ness’s novel, occasionally feels like one of those arty children’s movies that earn awards and acclaim—Where the Wild Things Are, or the revered Pan’s Labyrinth (which isn’t really a children’s movie).
Aided by the gothic production design of Eugenio Caballero (Oscar winner for Pan’s Labyrinth), the first half of the film exhibits a mystical, fairytale quality.
In this grief drama with a touch of fantasy (think Pan’s Labyrinth), director J.A. Bayona proves wholly adept at crafting a tale of genuine emotion that is packed with imagination and sincerity, offering up a strangely cathartic fairy tale of sorts that never lets the fantasy overwhelm the character drama.
Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Plot Characters Visuals
By the second and third acts, Fallen Kingdom feels more like a landlocked Aliens entry populated by one very clumsy Xenomorph alien than it does a movie about miraculous dinosaurs living among us.
The earlier film’s heroine, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), has since become a dinosaur rights activist, and she gets a call from invalid billionaire Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) and his slick assistant Eli Mills (Rafe Spall, looking and acting like his character was cloned from the remnants of Paul Reiser’s corporate sleazeball Carter Burke from Aliens), who have a plan to get the dinosaurs off the dying island and into a new, self-sustaining sanctuary, far from humans.
Nods to King Kong aside, Act II of Fallen Kingdom appears to have been inspired by Aliens, right down to the framing of the shots of the new designer dino, indoraptor, poking its snout at its intended victim.
Why not go the James Cameron’s Aliens route with one of these sequels, get a hard R-rating, and give us a real dinosaur apocalypse?
Spielberg is a clear influence, as is Stand By Me , but there’s also a thematic parallel with the more recent A Monster Calls.
And it follows in the footsteps of recent dark fantasies like A Monster Calls and I Kill Giants to remind us that our kids are stronger than we think.
A story in the slightly formulaic mold of A Monster Calls , The Water Man follows a child who retreats desperately into a world of imagination when his mother falls ill.
The Water Man, while destroying far fewer warehouses of Kleenex to reach its pinnacle, joins A Monster Calls and I Kill Giants as a trilogy of valuable discourses for bridging teens and adults together to engage with current and impending despair they may feel in their lives.
In his directorial debut, David Oyelowo reclaims the form in a story that is closer to the edge-of-adulthood folklore of Bridge to Terebithia and the grief-wracked A Monster Calls.
Alien (1979)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Characters Plot Visuals Themes
It also boasts aforementioned nick-of-time escapes from nipping jaws; Owen and Claire’s tepid, almost chemistry-free romance; little kids, in this case Lockwood’s perfectly pug-nosed granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon); being relentlessly run down like a tiny Sigourney Weaver from “Alien”; and explosions.
Not to mention the fact that not since the original Alien has “a corporation wants to harvest animals for weapons” been a fresh premise for heroic conflict.
Bayona stages some horrifying creature sequences, the final third of this flick becoming something of a gothic Alien variation with the Indoraptor stalking the halls of Lockwood’s house in search of its prey.
Fallen Kingdom is the silliest and most purely enjoyable variation on a story that a few big studio productions have been offering recently, in Alien: Covenant, War for the Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner 2049, and, on TV, Westworld — all fantasies leaning toward endings that involve not saving the world for humanity, but ceding it entirely to nonhumans.
From Alien onward, there have been films about shadowy men wanting dangerous creatures to be biological weapons.
His filmography often deals with darker fare, and that tone can be felt in the second half of …Fallen Kingdom, which comes off as a slasher/monster movie of the Alien variety.
Jurassic World (2015)
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
influenced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Plot
But in forgoing the expansive canvas that is Isla Nublar’s wilderness, the screenplay, co-scripted by Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, sometimes threatens to overshadow the fun dinosaur action with ho-hum human drama.
2015’s “Jurassic World” featured an irresistible premise: the failed dinosaur theme park promised in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original is finally realized, open and thriving.
Three years have passed since the collapse of the Jurassic World theme park there.
En 2015, siguiendo dicho manual de instrucciones, Colin Trevorrow facturó con Jurassic World una película más efectiva como estudio autoconsciente del Hollywood actual que como relato de aventuras.
Clutch the kids tightly folks, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will have them jumping out of their seats.
Let's get something out of the way up front: I Kill Giants is more than likely going to remind viewers of at least one of two possible movies, as there's a heavy dose of both Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are, as well as J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls contained in its text.
I Kill Giants, while a decent debut full-length feature from director Anders Walter (based on Joe Kelly’s graphic novel), is an unfortunate victim of timing as by the time the credits rolled I wish I had just re-watched A Monster Calls (one of the absolute best movies of 2016).
Perhaps the best of all of these, 2016’s powerful A Monster Calls , is the closest cousin to director Anders Walter’s feature debut, I Kill Giants.
Kelly may have got there first with his story in 2008, but JA Bayona’s 2016 adaptation of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls was more ambitious with its big screen retelling.
The story strongly recalls J.A. Bayona ’s 2016 film A Monster Calls — Kelly’s graphic novel hit shelves two years before Patrick Ness’ novel A Monster Calls, but the movie adaptation of the latter beat I Kill Giants to the screen by a year, and the symbolism and even some of the monster visuals are undeniably so similar that I Kill Giants feels like it’s operating in the other film’s shadow.
It doesn't help that J.A. Bayona's superbly crafted "A Monster Calls" covered the same subject matter with greater imagination and dramatic intensity last year.
Debuting feature director Juan Antonio Bayona and first-time feature writer Sergio G. Sánchez have fashioned a chiller with direct echoes of The Others, along with debts to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
influenced by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Plot Characters
Or the genetically manipulated super-dinosaur from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom?
…with ideas borrowed from “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” “Jurassic Park III,” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,”…
Krebs, for instance, rolled right off an assembly line of corporate Jurassic Park baddies that previously produced The Lost World and Fallen Kingdom antagonists.
The scale is smaller than the sprawling chaos of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom or Dominion, and there’s a clear attempt to focus on a single, contained mission like films of the original trilogy.
Both the idea that humans have grown tired of the dinosaurs who were resurrected in 1993’s Jurassic Park and the flashy mutant dinos created by scientists were major parts of the Jurassic World trilogy masterminded by Colin Trevorrow.
Jurassic World Rebirth offers immense improvement over immediate predecessors Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World Dominion.
His strong eye for shadows and love for a more patient pacing help build suspense and make even the most potentially campy concepts—like a Tyrannosaur-velociraptor hybrid lowering itself down from the roof above a young girl’s bedroom window, a la John Badham’s Dracula —have a delicious menace.