Good, but not that good

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2008)

Good, but I was expecting better given the reviews. It's about at the same level as, say, The Others. Belén Rueda plays an adult orphan who now lives in her former orphanage with her husband and adopted son. Her son speaks of imaginary friends, which she and her husband find normal. But these imaginary friends, it starts to seem, may really be ghosts. One day, the son vanishes, and Rueda thinks the ghosts may have something to do with it. The film is quite spooky, but I think the eeriness is pretty much ruined by an overzealous musical score. This really needed to be more subtle. The script has a couple of great twists, but, in general, it's fairly poor. It contains scenes where characters sit around and spout out endless exposition. Home movies are discovered which provide endless clues to the mystery. The most annoying flaw is that police and detectives are brought in to solve the case, and they find nothing. Later on, Rueda discovers all kinds of obvious clues that police searching for a missing child wouldn't have left uncovered. The final twist, I think, is particularly brilliant, but the movie lost me again with a lousy, sentimental ending.