Essay: Spanish Horror Films: Genre Progression v Gender Complications

This essay will attempt to evaluate the argument that “Spanish horror … might be in the forward-thinking vanguard in terms of genre – but not necessarily of gender” (Davies, 2011: 92). It will use Bayona’s The Orphanage [2007] and Guilliem Morales’s Julia’s Eyes [2010] in order to argue that this view is true and that Spanish horror films employ fresh, reinvigorated elements of horror to the existing generic conventions, however, they fail to employ such revitalisation to gender roles. This essay will call on critical analysis from writers such as Ann Davies and her chapter The Final Girl and Monstrous Mother of El Orfanato in her book Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema. (2011)
Firstly, this essay will give a brief synopsis of Boyona’s The Orphanage. The film begins in 1970’s Spain where Laura, a young orphan is adopted. The film skips forward to a period when Laura is now an adult, she returns to the now closed down orphanage alongside Carlos, her husband, and their son, Simón. Her plans include reopening the orphanage as a haven for disabled youngsters. Her child says he has become friends with a boy called Tomás, drawing a disturbing picture of his new friend wearing a mask made from a sack. The audience then learn from a social officer, called Benigna, that Simón was adopted by Laura and Carlos, they also learn the horrible news that Simón is HIV positive. After asking Benigna to leave, Laura discovers her in the orphanage’s shed. Subsequently, Simón teaches his mother a game, this results in the two finding Simon’s adoption certificate. Símon becomes enraged, telling Laura that his new friend has told him he is not their biological son and given him the news that he will die soon. Simón and Laura argue at a party for the orphanage’s opening. He runs off and while looking for him Lura meets the child wearing the sack mask, the child pushes Laura into a bathroom and locks her inside. A policeman tells Laura and Carlos that Benigna has likely abducted Simón. The films jumps forward six months, Simón is still missing. During a session of looking for him, Laura see’s Benigna who is ultimately hit and killed by a car. The audience then learns that Benigna worked at the orphanage and had a son named Tomás. Tomás had facial defects causing him to wear a mask to conceal his deformed face. Kids stole this mask leaving Tomás to hide in a cave, with the tide ultimately drowning him. The rest of the narrative sees Laura employ a group of parapsychologists to try and locate Simón, in the process she learns that Benigna murdered the children Laura grew up with for having caused her own son’s death. While performing a seance in order to find Simón, the spirits lead her to his corpse. Laura indirectly caused her own son’s death by blocking the entrance to a secret room when searching for him. In the denouement of the film, Laura overdosing on sleeping pills, begs to be reunited with her dead child again. The child spirits appear again this time Simón is with them and the two are reunited once more.
This essay will now evaluate Davies’s claim with close reference to The Orphanage, examining the film in terms of genre and gender, to prove that The Orphanage is forward thinking in terms of genre but not in terms of gender.
Firstly, it is quite clear that The Orphanage can be categorised in the supernatural horror sub-genre, a sub-genre which dates back to the work of William Shakespeare, yet it has certainly had a resurgence in the contemporary era, resulting in the best success in the box-office since the slasher film sub-genre of the late seventies, early eighties. This is especially the case in Spain, where the horror genre in general lay dormant after the country’s passage to democracy. As Ian Olney states in his article Looking with Julia’s Eyes: Gender, Spectatorship, and Contemporary Spanish Horror Cinema. “Over the past decade or so, the Spanish horror film has undergone a striking renaissance. During the final years of the Franco regime, in the 1960s and 1970s, horror cinema flourished in Spain, producing such genre icons as Jess Franco, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Amando de Ossorio, and Paul Naschy; following the country’s transition to democracy, however, it entered a period of decline that lasted through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. In the twenty-first century, it is resurgent.” (2013). The majority of elements of supernatural horror which can be identified in The Orphanage lean towards macro elements of film form, such as thematic techniques including, the blurring of lines between the living and deceased, exploration of the relationship between mother and child, the defilement of the innocence of children. However, the films also incorporates micro film elements such as mise-en scene, cinematography and setting in order to provide a contemporary, forward thinking version of the horror film. These include, dark low-key lighting and an abandoned mansion which provides nostalgia for the central character.
That said, it would appear that it’s progressions in genre is not enough to fully back Spanish horrors categorisation as forward thinking. Despite the excellent commercial success of The Orphanage and its stablemates, Davies’s has still labeled the genre as ideologically flawed. She states, “The mysterious old woman Benigna and the masked child Tomás that hint at monstrosity, who turn up intermittently throughout the film, prove to be red herrings, as the real ‘monster’ proves to be Laura herself, the one responsible for her child’s disappearance.” (2011, p. 80). Moreover, Davies delineates what she labels as the final girl. “Offers a conservative reading that subverts the active subjectivity of the Final Girl since that impulse to survival and confrontation is now turned inwards. Laura in the end confronts her own self and the horror of what he herself has done: in addition she also confronts, not a monster that is diametrically opposed to her (as in the original conception of the Final Girl, where the monster was usually male), but a concept of monstrous motherhood [. . .]” (2011, p. 91). Moreover, Laura initially represents the heroic final girl from slasher films, however, she does not defeat a monster with its own entity in the denouement, instead she cowardly takes her own life and transforms herself into the monstrous mother trope of the conventional horror film.
This essay will now give a brief synopsis of the second case study, Morales’s Julia’s Eyes. The film begins with the apparent suicide of a blind woman named Sara. As this happens, her twin sister Julia collapses at work. Julia discovers the corpse of her dead sister, believing it to be the work of a spirit. Her husband Isaac, concerned with the decaying of his wife eyes, begs her to stop investigating her sisters death. During a visit to a hotel, where her sister stayed before her death, she is contacted by a cleaner who warns of ‘creatures who live in shadows’. Subsequently, Julia’s husband vanishes, along with the cleaner. She enlist the help of the police, however, both the cleaner and her husband Isaac are found dead. Isaac is found hanging in the same location as Julia’s sister, Sara. At this point Julia has lost all of her vision. While at the hospital she learns of an apparent suicide note left by Isaac, confessing his love for Sara. The hospital perform a procedure to bring back Julia’s vision, however, before she is due to remove the bandages she is dragged away by a shadow man, after returning to Sara’s house. She escapes to the neighbouring house, the man who lives there, Señor Blasco, attempts to rape her but Julia escapes to her day carer, Iván’s, house. The audience learn that Iván is in fact a murderer and has pictures of the twin sisters on his wall. Julia pretends her eyesight has not returned in an effort to trick Iván, however, Iván does not fall for this and kidnaps Julia and takes her back to Sara’s house. The audience learn that Iván is in fact called Ángel. Julia awakens in the basement of Sara’s house where Ángel proclaims his love for her. Julia escapes and contacts the police. She identifies Ángel, the shadow man, to the police using a torch. Ángel cuts his own throat after begging the police not to look at him. In the final minutes of the film the audience learns that the damage to Julia’s eyes is not reversible, and that her eye donor had been her late husband Isaac.
This essay will now further evaluate Davies’s claim with close reference to Julia’s Eyes, examining the film in terms of genre and gender, to prove that Julia’s Eye’s is forward thinking in terms of genre but not in terms of gender.