Rule of Rose Mysteries

Now that the movie “The Orphanage” (“El Orfanato”) is available on DVD, I think it is a good time to compare the endings.

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?”
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There are some very large bags on the floor in Gregory’s kitchen, and there are black shapes on the floor associated with these bags. Most of these shapes have outlines that suggest the flow of some sort of fluid.

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?

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

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The night-before-last I went to the cinema and watched “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”).

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).

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