"When something terrible happens sometimes it leaves a trace. It's like an echo repeated over and over, waiting to be heard..."

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2009)

The old, old stone mansion that once was an orphanage sits isolated within its ill-kempt gardens and grounds. The abandoned lighthouse on the cliff not far away no longer shines a beacon. The cave below and the sandy beach still receive the incoming tide. Be wary. Laura Sanchez grew up in the orphanage. When she was about seven she was adopted and left. Now she is 37, married to Carlos, and they are parents to a little boy, Simon, about seven. They adopted Simon, who doesn't know this, and who is deadly ill with a disease only pills can keep at bay. Now Laura and Carlos have just bought the abandoned orphanage and are moving in. It is a large building of many rooms and hallways, with dark oak paneling, old fire places and frosted, etched glass. They hope to make it a home for children with special needs. There are no children yet, just Simon.
Simon makes friends, make-believe friends. They tell him things, he says. "I won't grow old. I'm not going to grow up," he tells his mother. "Will you be like Peter Pan?" Laura asks. "Like my new friends," Simon says. "There's more than one?" "Six." "They won't grow up either?" Laura asks. Simon looks at her. "They can't," he says
Simon leads Laura in a game to discover clues, a game he and his friends have invented. Suddenly the game is foreboding. "You're not my mother!" Simon screams at Laura. "Who told you that?" she asks, stricken that this little boy, her son, is facing something she and her husband were waiting to tell him when he was older. "My friend told me," Simon says. "What friend?" "Tomas," Simon yells, crying and defiant. "Tomas told me the truth, that I'm just like them.... I have no mother or father and I'm going to die."
Days later, Simon disappears, apparently kidnapped. The parents, with Laura increasingly frantic, try everything to find him. In time, there will only be Laura and this moldering stone mansion where she was raised as an orphan with other orphans. We begin to learn what happened there when Laura as a child left.
So...whose imagination, whose story are we inhabiting?
"Horror" is a term that has been debased in the movies over the last thirty years or so. Technology and computers have eliminated most of the need for imagination and the kind of dread we make for ourselves out of little things. Market research drives so many creative decisions into the dead end of splatter and special effects. The Orphanage is just slightly a horror movie. It is lonely, deliberative, sad, thoughtful, even quiet, even, surprisingly, with a degree of contentment at the conclusion.
All the actors do fine jobs, and there is a notably quiet and intense performance by Geraldine Chaplin as a psychic whose own death is near. It is Belen Rueda as Laura who helps make this movie something special. There are so many opportunities for intense "acting," distraught "acting," tearful "acting." Rueda does nothing of this. We believe her as Laura because she doesn't try to over-dramatize Laura. Laura is often intense and sometimes distraught. She also puzzles through this mystery, is determined to find her son and can take action. But Rueda never overacts. Thanks to Rueda's performance and fine directing and screen writing, I think The Orphanage establishes itself as an unusual and intriguing movie.