Whether or not you may think that there have been influences of one work on the other, I think that you will find that the ending of “The Orphanage”, which is quite different from the ending of “Rule of Rose”, can none-the-less bring considerable light to bear on a question that has been of great concern to many players of “Rule of Rose”. That question is:

“Why does Jennifer leave Brown behind in the rickety shed in the last scene of the game?”

The protagonist of “The Orphanage”, Laura, cannot bear to not be together with her beloved dead son, so she takes an overdose of medication and kills herself. Her spirit can now dwell with the spirit of her dead son in the orphanage.

I’ve heard it said that “The Orphanage” can be interpreted either as a ghost story or in psychological terms, but I think that the film-maker has really heavily weighted the movie toward being a ghost story. The audience is, I think, supposed to believe that Laura’s suicide isn’t so bad… because she and her son can now be together.

Rule of Rose, although in some ways seeming to be like a ghost story, is (in my opinion) more heavily weighted towards the psychological: Jennifer is dreaming, not awake and encountering real ghosts. But the choice she has to make, about whether to embrace life or to somehow try to “be” with her dead friends in the orphanage, involves similar alternatives to those faced by Laura.

Jennifer could try to choose to join Brown, Wendy, Gregory, and the others in the “heaven” of the “Once Upon A Time” chapter… but to do so would be to choose not to live. Her friends are dead.

And because the game has a psychological interpretation, rather than a ghost story interpretation, we know that Jennifer, by trying to stay with her friends, would really just doom her friends to the non-existence of being forgotten because she is the only person who remembers them, the only person who can keep the memory of them alive. If she commits a “love suicide”, then they all disappear.

As sad as it may seem, that Wendy remains behind the locked front gate of the orphanage, and that Brown remains tethered inside the rickety shed, the only life-affirming thing that Jennifer can do is to lock her friends in her heart and return to the real world with her fond memories of them.

~

To read about the similarities between “Rule of Rose” and “The Orphanage” read my blog-post:  “El Orfanato” (”The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” Similarities (movie spoilers!)

I wonder if these shapes represent old blood, blood that seeped out of these bags at some time in the past. Old blood can turn very dark colored I think.

When you click “x” next to one of these bags, you get this response: “Is this a bag of flour? Rats have chewed through it.” Looking at the screen-image accompanying this message, up in the extreme right corner of the screen one can see another bag, and it looks (to me at least) like the dark shape on the floor adjacent to that bag matches a stain on the bag, and seems to be something that has seeped out of the corner of that bag. Could it be blood? Are we being shown bags out of which blood has seeped and then dried?

I never thought of these dark shapes as blood before because, despite the fact that the outlines of the shapes resemble fluid flow, they somehow seemed to have a thickness on the floor that made me think it was some non-fluid something (although I can’t really imagine what that non-fluid something would be). And the black and gray coloring didn’t really seem very blood-like to me either. But if the shapes don’t represent blood that seeped out and then dried, what else could they possibly be? Any ideas?

What do you think the black shapes are?

I recently started thinking more about these large bags in Gregory’s kitchen because of something involving large bags that occurs in the movie “The Orphanage” (“El Orfanato”). I won’t say more about that here, to avoid movie spoilers, but if you want to read more on this topic then see my previous post “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” Similarities (movie spoilers!).

For information relating to Gregory possibly being a killer of children prior to the orphanage massacre, see my posts:

Was Gregory a Cannibal?

Peas That Kick and Scream 

Warning! This post contains spoilers for the movie “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage)

In my previous post “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” (spoiler-free), I stated my opinion that, although “The Orphanage”–a film produced by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona–definitely is NOT “Rule of Rose: The Movie”, I do think that its screenplay writer Sergio G. Sanchez took the story of Rule of Rose as an inspirational starting point to think up a new story that is very different from Rule of Rose, but which has many of Rule of Rose’s story-elements retained.

I also think that there is at least one deliberate homage to Rule of Rose in The Orphanage. Maybe many more.

Let’s look at some of the broad similarities in the two stories.

In both stories: A woman returns to the orphanage where she spent part of her childhood. The children that she knew from those days are dead, but she will re-encounter them at the orphanage, and she will discover that these orphans were murdered by an adult in the past and that she was the only orphan from those times to survive. Her re-encountering of those dead orphans will involve her playing a game with them in which she must search for things.

Within that broad framework of similarity, the two stories do have many differences. One difference is that, in “The Orphanage”, the protagonist Laura survived the massacre of the orphans by being adopted before the massacre occurred. She never knew that the massacre occurred because she wasn’t there at the time. In the case of Jennifer of “Rule of Rose”, however, she was living at the orphanage at the time of the massacre, survived it, but blocked the memory both of massacre and of her time spent at the orphanage.

Back to similarities:

The searching game that Laura, of “The Orphanage”, must play, at one point involves opening up nested dolls (these were Matryoshka dolls, see this link if you want read more about them) to find out what is inside of the innermost doll. This unusual feature wasn’t at all required for the story of “The Orphanage” so I strongly think that it is a deliberate homage to “Rule of Rose”. In the searching game of the “Bird of Happiness” chapter of “Rule of Rose”, Jennifer must open up nested boxes to find what is inside of the innermost box. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

In “The Orphanage”, the protagonist is attacked by an orphan that wears a creepy bag-mask. In “Rule of Rose”, the protagonist is attacked by creepy imps (some wearing bag masks) that are actually fantasy-embellishments of what was, in Jennifer’s forgotten past, the orphans wearing creepy bag-masks. See my posts: The Imps Mystery and Orphans-wearing-bags (Part 1) // The Imps Mystery and Orphans-wearing-bags (Part 2) // The Imps Mystery and Orphans-wearing-bags (Part 3) // The Imps Mystery and Orphans-wearing-bags (Part 4).

There is a scarecrow-like construct in “The Orphanage” that may be an homage to Rule of Rose’s bucket-knight.

In “Rule of Rose”, dolls (Joshua-the-bear, Little Princess doll, and the goat dolls) are sometimes used to represent certain orphans, and the use of specific dolls to represent specific orphans also occurs in “The Orphanage”.

In “Rule of Rose” Jennifer can use the movie projector to watch scenes from the past, and in “The Orphanage” Laura uses a movie projector to watch scenes from the past.

Laura finds the remains of hidden corpses of the murdered orphans in bags of white powder. I’m not certain what that white powder was. Was it ash from cremated bodies? Was it quicklime? Flour? If you know, please tell me. There is possibly a connection to Rule of Rose in the matter of the white powder in bags. Maybe not. In the “Gingerbread House” chapter of “Rule of Rose” Jennifer can click “x” near a large bag (among several similar large bags) on the floor of the kitchen and get the response: “Is this a bag of flour? Rats have chewed through it.” Now, I admit that I don’t actually see white powder there… it may be implied that Jennifer can see some white powder, that she thinks might be flour, where the rats have chewed through the bag, but I really don’t think so. I think that Jennifer guesses that the bags are flour-bags due only to the large size of the bags. The line, “Is this a bag of flour?” sounds innocent enough, but as Gregory is a child murderer in the Rule of Rose story (even before he massacres the orphans), and I think that this large bag in his kitchen is supposed to be a clue to that effect (I think that all click-able objects are likely to be clues of some sort). It seems possible to me that the creators of “The Orphanage” may have taken the idea of that bag, of which Jennifer asks “Is this a bag of flour?”, and interpreted the bag as being related to the remains of murdered children… and so chose to use that bag-of-white-powder-like-flour idea for the scene in which the murdered orphans’ remains are found by Laura in bags of white powder. At the very least, the idea of corpses in bags may be a similarity. See my related post: What Are the Black Shapes On Gregory’s Kitchen Floor? Blood?

In a comment on this (Rule of Rose Mysteries) site, Flo wrote about a summary of the movie that she had read that made The Orphanage sound rather similar in some respects to Rule of Rose.

And over on the GamesSpot/GameFAQs Rule of Rose forum, a couple of people who saw the movie had remarked on similarities between Rule of Rose and The Orphanage.

So I wanted to see for myself how similar they are.

And besides that reason to see it, The Orphanage was getting some pretty good reviews.

The Internet Movie Database has The Orphanage rated at 7.8-out-of-10, which is pretty high for a horror-genre film. Link: IMDB on The Orphanage.

And Rotten Tomatoes gives The Orphanage an 84% rating, which is unusually high for a horror genre film. Link: Rotten Tomatoes reviews.

El Orfanato is a Spanish-language movie, filmed in Spain. It was produced by Guillermo del Toro, who wrote and directed “Pan’s Labyrinth.” El Orfanato was directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, and the screenplay (said to be an original screenplay) was written by Sergio G. Sanchez.

Was Sanchez influenced by Rule of Rose?

Well, let me say right off that “The Orphanage” is definitely NOT “Rule of Rose: The Movie”.

And I have never seen an acknowledgement of the influence of Rule of Rose on The Orphanage in print or elsewhere.

But I DO think that Sanchez was aware of Rule of Rose and used it as an inspiration, a jumping off point, from which to create an original and different story (with a number of elements from Rule of Rose retained).

The Orphanage is a good movie, and one that I think people who liked Rule of Rose will probably enjoy.

To discuss the similarities with, and a possible subtle homage to, Rule of Rose that are found in El Orfanato, I’d have to get into spoilers… so I’ll save that for an up-coming spoiler-containing post.

I will say here, however, that the similarity between the wallpaper background used on my blog-site, and the wallpaper used in the movie, was something that I found rather amusing!

Here is a link to the official movie site (English language): TheOrphanageMovie

Please don’t write any comments to this post that contain spoilers! Please save spoiler-containing comments for my spoiler-containing post: “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” Similarities (movie spoilers!).