top-notch Spanish horror film

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2010)

"The Orphanage" offers proof positive that quality filmmaking can triumph over even the tritest of themes. In bare outline, it's really just the oldie about the family that moves into a creepy older establishment – in this case an abandoned orphanage with a very dark past – only to be hounded by the spirits of the people who died there under horrific circumstances. Laura (Belen Rueda) is a woman who was herself raised there as a child and who has now returned with her husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), and their adopted son, Simon (Roger Princep), to open a home for disabled children. In no time flat, however, things begin going bump in the night, and Simon disappears under mysterious circumstances. Could the souls of the children who died there be trying to contact the living, and could they be using Simon as a means of achieving that end?
Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of how such stories normally play themselves out should have no trouble divining the answers to those questions. But in his debut as a director, Juan Antonio Bayona demonstrates a real flair for the macabre, so that every haunted-house-movie cliché – every creaking door, every sudden apparition – that comes our way seems somehow new and fresh again. Perhaps it's the artful imagery, the fluid camera-work, or the highly effective soundtrack – or all three combined - that account for the movie's effectiveness. Whatever it is, Bayona is able to imbue even the most mundane object – a playground ride, a child's doll – with the utmost menace and dread.
At times, the film seems to be channeling some of the "greats" of the genre, namely "The Innocents," "The Omen," "Poltergeist" (especially with its high-tech ghost-hunters and creepy psychic played by Geraldine Chaplin), and the original version of "The Haunting." And because of the quality of the work here, the movie emerges more as an homage to those earlier classics than a slavish imitation of them.
People may be divided over the story's resolution – finding it either immensely satisfying or unnecessarily corny – but no one can deny that, for genuine thrills and suspense, "The Orphanage" is one of the better horror movies of the past several years.