Life ends where childhood begins

Rating: 10/10 (17 May 2008)

"One, two, three, knock on the wall.".never before have such innocent lines from a children's game of hide and seek carried so much foreboding as they do in Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (El Orfanato). In fact, I can't recall ever watching a movie that so creeped me out and yet left me emotionally drained at the end, to the point where I was moved to tears. Such is the mastery of this film.
Marketed heavily on the name of Guillermo del Toro, the masterful director of Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone (and you thought he was best known for that Hellboy crap), who served as Producer, The Orphanage is really the achievement of writer Sergio G. Sánchez, for whom this marks only his third of five screenplays, and director Bayona helming his first theatrical film.
One of the best ghost story fables to come along since 2001's The Others, the movie tells the story of Laura who, along with her husband Carlos, purchase the vacant orphanage in which she spent her childhood. The couple plan to covert it into their residence and home for disabled children. Everything appears to be going swimmingly until their adopted son Simon, who already has a couple of imaginary friends, begins to see the mysterious figure of Tomas, a young boy whose face is ominously hidden by a burlap sack. The boundaries between reality and fantasy become blurred when Laura also begins seeing the child, and become all the more heightened when tragedy strikes the young family in the form of Simon's sudden disappearance.
In an attempt to find their son, the couple employ the services of a medium and team of parapsychologists with hair-raising results. Bayona masterfully ratchets up the creep factor by having Laura conclude that the only way she can uncover clues to Simon's disappearance is by spending two days alone in the orphanage and trying to summon the ghosts of the children that walk its halls. All of which leads to a terrifying and emotionally draining end.
Thanks to del Toro, The Orphanage carries much of the look and feel of Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone, two films equally obsessed with the plight of children in harms way. And, like both del Toro films, you can expect to find yourself left in awe at the brilliantly crafted story The Orphanage tells.