The Orphanage- Use Sceptics to your Advantage

And here comes the big fix. A film that is so emotional, so intense, and so true to its roots. And it is far more than just a horror film- it is a film about motherhood, a film about childhood, about innocence, about the powers of our imaginations. This film is a masterpiece without a doubt.

It is the story of a mother, called Laura, who returns with her husband and son to her childhood home- an orphanage. As time goes by, her son starts to talk about some imagined friends, friends that Laura and her husband ignore as nonsense. But after her son, Simon, disappears, the real horror begins. Or is it just her imagination?

Short summaries like this one don't do the movie any justice. It is one of those movies that one just has to see for himself/herself. But I wanna talk about one of the things that make this movie so powerful, so full of horror and terror and suspense and dread. The movie has the sceptic character(s).

In this movie, we begin with all of the characters except for Simon as sceptics, but as the movie advances Laura also starts to believe. Yet, the others are sceptics. And those sceptics are important, as they give this movie to edges on movies without sceptics.

Firstly, sceptics leave our protagonist with no choice but to try and figure the truth by herself. She has no one else to ask for help, as after all nobody really believes her. The cops say that it is bullshit; her husband says that she starts to get mad, and the only ones who believe her are the paranormal experts, which doesn't make the situation any better.

But secondly, and far more importantly, is that this sceptic helps us to keep our suspension of disbelief. And why is that? Because through the sceptic(s) the director tells us that "yeah, it is quite strange, it does seem really farfetched". And when the director acknowledges that, it is far easier for us to believe in what we see, or at the very least to stop saying to ourselves- "Oh, this is just too strange to be real".

And when we're dealing with the supernatural, the combination of these two things is a huge edge that we can give to our games. Have in your Cthulhu game a cop who thinks that what the PCs are saying is crap. Have a friend of the PCs, in your World of Darkness games, dispute their theories. And suddenly, they will be inclined to work harder, because there's no one else to do the job, because if it is strange to the world inhabitants it is really strange and thus easier to believe, because of the disputer is close to the PCs the players will want to prove it to say to this friend of them: "A-ah, see? That is real!"

And that's it for today. How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what did you learn from it?