Gore Orphanage is a 2015 horror film by Cody Knotts and Emily Lapisardi based off of the urban legend of the titular orphanage
. Nellie, a young girl in the 1930s, is orphaned and sent off to Gore Orphanage. There, Mrs. Pryor rules with an iron fist, pocketing the money allocated for the care of the orphans, aided by Ernst, the German handyman who speaks little but is rumored to have special "playtime" with certain girls in the orphanage, and Miss Lillian, the sympathetic teacher whom all of the children look up to. Nellie befriends Buddy and Esther, but soon, the harsh life of the orphanage becomes even worse when children start to die.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- Dead Man's Chest: Buddy is stashed in the same windowseat that he hid his comics in.
- Enfante Terrible: Nellie turns out to be the person who was performing all of the killings.
- Hollywood Darkness: Used for all of the night scenes.
- Hollywood Fire: Inverted. No flames are ever seen, just bright light just off camera and lots of smoke.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Any place called "Gore Orphanage" is probably not a safe place for children. Though, see Urban Legends for the source of the name; a 'gore' is a perfectly innocent map feature.
- Sole Survivor: The beginning of the film establishes that Great-grandmother Nellie was the sole survivor of the "terrible tragedy" of Gore Orphanage.
- Staircase Tumble: This is how Esther dies.
- Urban Legends: The urban legend of Gore Orphanage surrounds a ruin in Vermillon, OH where some claim you can still hear the cries of the children. The orphanage has never actually existed. The ruin was a former mansion that burned down on Gore Orphanage Road, a street named after the gore map feature and the existence of an orphanage along the road.
- Vorpal Pillow: Used on Anna albeit with a teddy bear.
